


Only One Fish In My Sea

by KingAlanI



Category: Hunger Games (2012), Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Autism, Canon Compliant, F/M, Friendship, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-28
Updated: 2013-11-01
Packaged: 2017-12-09 19:02:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 26,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/776931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KingAlanI/pseuds/KingAlanI
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>By Alan Gilfoy in the world of Suzanne Collins. A special girl and boy from District Four meet each other, but the Capitol won’t allow them any semblance of a normal life.</p><p>Inspired by an autistic!Annie prompt on tumblr. Since I’m mildly autistic myself, I was interested in that. I add to what I’ve already written about Annie and Finnick, but I don’t contradict it. I already had incorporated Mainstay Productions’ Finnick And Annie Web Series into my headcanon. </p><p>All Annie POV. Chapters 1 through 9 are canon-compliant.  Chapters 10 through 14 are Gale's Hunger Games AU, 10-12 mirroring the 1st story and 13-14 the beginning of its sequel Fanning The Flames.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. No Safety Net

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter covers the timeframe of Episodes 1 and 2 of the web series.

            I was only twelve years old, but since I was even younger, I had known that I was special in ways both good and bad, or in ways people thought were bad.

 

The summer after one’s 12th birthday tended to be particularly memorable. The weather was always so nice that time of year, and this particular year was the last before a person’s first Hunger Games reaping. Celebrating that last summer was an attempt to distract oneself from the upcoming dread. Fortunately for me, that was mostly working. Somebody usually volunteered for whoever was chosen. However, that didn’t always happen, so I was still a bit scared. A lot of people were, but it had more of an impact on me because I really didn’t like unexpected things.

 

Twenty-four people went and only one came back, so twenty-three died. Usually the dead people included both of the kids that came from my home of District Four. I remember when Daddy’s mommy and daddy got sick, and my parents said it was kind of like that, but these people were so much younger. It was all so mean, something more than that really, but we didn’t dare say anything about it except to ourselves.

 

However, there was always one person who won. The year after I turned four, another girl named Annie from another district won. The year after that, the boy from our district won. Daddy said he was just barely old enough to remember the second victor in the history of District Four, a girl named Margaret who was now a nice old lady called Mags. The first District Four victor since Mommy was born was a girl named Olive, who loved the previous boy victor Popeye like Mommy loved Daddy.

 

            I was incredibly good at focusing on some things, although I sometimes wasn’t good at changing my focus to something else when I had to. District Four was all about fishing, and my family made nets. I was really good at tying knots, and I loved the grid pattern of strings that made up the nets. One day we made a lot of nets, even more than usual. Mommy knew I loved to ride in a boat on the ocean, so she took me there as it was getting dark for the day.

 

            I just was no good at focusing on some other things. Sometimes I wasn’t interested and couldn’t or wouldn’t pretend I cared. For instance, I hadn’t learned how to balance in the boat or listen when Mommy told me to sit down. I hadn’t fallen out of the boat, so I had stopped worrying - it seems mommies always worried about everything. However, this time I did end up in the water. I was not good at swimming, and Mommy wasn’t either, so she started screaming. I started flailing with my arms in the water. A boy not much older than me was standing in the water. He was near some of the groups of tall reeds at the water’s edge. He could swim, very well actually, and came rushing towards me. Once he reached me, he put his arms under my shoulders and dragged me onto the beach. Thanks to him, I was coughing but I was okay. I told him my name was Annie. It was really Anemone, Anemone Cresta, but everyone called me Annie. His name really was Finnick Odair, he said.

 

            I was really good at school, if it was a subject I cared about, but I didn’t have many friends there or anyone else in the district. Finnick was about the only person I spent time with who wasn’t family and wasn’t in the net business.

 

            We ended up spending a lot of time together. Finnick carried me to his house. “Look what I caught! An Annie Cresta!” he cheerfully told his mommy and daddy. Even I saw how happy Finnick’s mom still was with Finnick’s dad. I wanted that kind of thing myself some day, but I probably wouldn’t get it. Would a boy like Finnick really like me? He was awfully cute, especially when his shirt was off, which it often was. I think he’d grow up to be awfully handsome, and then lots of girls would be interested in him, and then what chance would I have?

 

            August 1st was my first Reaping and Finnick’s second. The Capitol man didn’t call either of our names to be dragged away. I don’t remember what names he did pick – that seemed irrelevant because two people volunteered for them anyway. They were both killed by Gloss, the boy from District One. He ended up winning, right after his big sister Cashmere had won last year.

 

I wondered what it was like to have sisters and brothers. Finnick thought about that too, since he didn’t have any siblings either. A lot of people who loved each other wanted babies but I guess it would be too hard to watch them in the Reaping. Some people compromised and had only one. I think that’s what my parents had done, and Finnick’s too. Maybe Finnick saw me like the sister he never had. I wanted him to be my boyfriend, but he would be a pretty cool brother too. I knew he couldn’t be both, since if people were both, their babies might not be healthy.

 

Mommy tried to make me feel better. “Our little girl is smart and pretty,” she said. As she said _pretty_ , I looked towards the water and saw my reflection. My hair was dark brown – I was reminded of Finnick’s, which was somewhat lighter. It was short like for most boys; mine was long and curly and I played with a handful of it while I looked at the water. I still liked Mommy brushing it sometimes. My skin looked like I had a tan, but I was born with it. Again, I couldn’t help but think of Finnick; he was a similar shade. “The right boy will see what’s so great about you and he’ll be worth the wait. It took me awhile to find Daddy, after all,” Mommy explained. Have you heard people say that there are many fish in the sea?” she asked.

“Yes,” I answered. _But I didn’t know how to fish. Finnick’s family did that, and even he was still learning._

She had different thoughts about the phrase, and said of Daddy that “there’s only one fish in my sea”.

 

Finnick seemed slow in learning how to fish, and I sometimes teased him about that. He thought it was easy to tie knots to make nets – _maybe for me_ , I thought as I tried to correct him. I wanted him to put up or shut up with this talk about nets before I let him teach me how to swim. He seemed quite surprised that someone who lived in District Four couldn’t swim. What we were doing seemed like an argument, but I found it oddly relaxing. Sometimes I wasn’t sure how to simply talk to people, but I understood a battle of wits. It was actually quite playful; we sometimes splashed sand or water at each other. I sat on a towel that I had laid down over the beach sand, and he sometimes grabbed at it.

 

Some people had tried to give me swimming lessons before, without luck. Maybe I didn’t like them or the way it felt when they touched me. Perhaps the lessons were something I wouldn’t or couldn’t focus on because I hadn’t been interested. Yet Finnick was different – he wasn’t special in the same way I was, but there was still something unique about him.


	2. Finnick's Voyage

            I felt like a very lucky girl lately – as they say, the odds were in my favor. For once people thought I was special _in a good way_. There was no school in August so we could focus on watching the Games, but there was school again in September. A lot of people knew I was friends with Finnick now. “Isn’t he so handsome?” so many girls said.

            I didn’t know what that meant, so I asked “Mommy, what’s ‘handsome’?”

            “It’s the boy version of ‘pretty’,” Mommy told me. Well, he was. Thinking about that swarthy skin, those big green eyes, I felt all funny – I think that’s how boys were supposed to make a girl feel. His eyes foamed like a wavy sea, as much so as mine did, but would he ever look at me with them as anything more than a friend? “You’re pretty too, especially since you think you are,” Mommy reassured me.

 

            At school or at home making nets, usually what I liked to do was inside and fairly alone. Now I also spent a lot of time outside, and with Finnick. We were having so much fun together, I was a lot happier since we met and I think Finn was too, but eventually that very sad thing would happen.

 

            It seemed everyone was nervous on Reaping Day except for the woman from the Capitol. She didn’t say ‘Annie Cresta’. _So I had made it two years, and had five left_. This was Finnick’s third year, and after today he would have only four left. But she did pick ‘Finnick Odair’! No one volunteered for him. Some mean people were jealous of him so they probably didn’t care. I don’t understand how you could hate Finnick Odair, except if you weren’t as good as he was – not as loyal, not as good at fishing, not as handsome, not as clever. Some people seemed jealous of Finn and were glad to see him taken away. Some other people were just glad it wasn’t them. Usually it was older kids, since they had more entries and were more likely to be good volunteers. Maybe some nicer people thought that even though Finn was so young, he still had a better chance than they did.

 

            He really did make a net for me after all, but now he had to go before he could show it to me. Well, he had to come back so I could see it and he could teach me how to swim. I gave him a bracelet, a more tightly woven version of the net material, buttoning it around his wrist.

 

            Finnick didn’t tell anyone about me – I think he couldn’t, since he needed to get the attention of sponsors. That would be harder to do if everyone thought he already had a girlfriend. I’m not sure if I was or ever would be that, but it would be logical for the audience to think that if they knew about us. They only saw how handsome and strong he was, but I also knew how great he was to be around.

 

            He did well stabbing people with the spears and knives he found in the Cornucopia, although that was hard enough to watch. He was unstoppable once his mentor sent him a trident, a gift paid for by all those sponsors. There were vines in the arena, and he used them to make nets to catch the tributes that were still left. I had taught him how to do that and he was using it to help come back home! It didn’t make sense to be overly positive, and it was particularly dangerous to be like that if you were someplace like the arena. So Finnick hadn’t been sure if he was going to win, but he did.

 

            When he got back, he didn’t want to talk about it, not even with me. We were pretty close now, so it must’ve been really bad if even I didn’t know about it. I respected that. I understood from personal experience when people wanted to be left alone. I definitely knew what it was like when my mind was too different for other people to understand what was going on. It was something from the arena, I figured out that much. His parents weren’t victors, so he probably wasn’t talking to them either. Maybe only the other people in Victors Village would understand.

 

            I didn’t really visit him in Victors Village; we spent most of our time together near the same beach where we met.

 

            He _did_ talk about swimming, and how great it felt to be in the water. He finally wanted to teach and I finally wanted to learn, at least with each other. He held my hand as we waded into the water. Not only was I okay with his touch, I actually liked it. It felt even better when he held me even closer as I started to explore the water. That first time in the water, I just floated and kicked as I held on to Finnick. He had to hold me since I obviously couldn’t swim by myself yet.

 

Again we pretended to fight, as we planned more lessons. The hug after our first one was the closest we’d come to a kiss, and even I could tell how much we liked even that.

 

            We waded in just deep enough to be able to kick up and down, but shallow enough that I could safely stand. I needed to feel safe, and I kept feeling more and more secure around Finnick, but the water was still scary. Nets could bring fish up, but they could also keep people from going down as far. For the second lesson, Finnick held onto me as I paddled with my hands. Eventually I went from waving my arms through the water to cupping my hands and pulling through the clear blue. Finnick taught me that if my fingers were close together, water couldn’t go between them, so I could push more water, and move better that way. I was getting more and more used to it; my arms were getting more used to it and it seemed less scary.

 

            One time I felt my legs kick but through the water instead of against Finnick’s hands. He had let go! But I pulled with my hands just like when he was holding me and I soon saw him further behind me. He splashed a lot as he ran after me. “You’re swimming, Annie Cresta!” he shouted so happily.

            I stopped and put my feet down in the stone and sand. “I guess I was, Finn!” I said, so proud of myself.

            He came close to me and used the collar of his shirt, not so wet, to dry off his lips and mine. Married people at their weddings kissed with saltwater on their lips. It was cute how Finnick purposely avoided that grown up stuff, for we were still a girl and boy even as Finnick was very much starting to look like a man. He purposely didn’t avoid my lips with his, though. The feeling was even more magical than people had tried to tell me.

 

            This day, September 22nd, the Earth stood straight up facing the Sun, as did I with Finnick. Supposedly night and day were equal as summer turned into fall, but today the star appeared at ten minutes after six and disappeared at nineteen minutes after eighteen. That moment, as it dipped beneath the horizon, came as Finnick sorrowfully had to remove his lips from mine. He smiled and said “You’re so good at making nets that you caught me.”

 

The summer before the first reaping was usually special, but the summer after my second had been even more so. The next step of my voyage with Finnick began as that season ended.


	3. Base Instincts

Every victor had a Victory Tour the winter after they made it out of the arena, starting exactly six months after their Games had begun with the reaping. It wasn’t much of a celebration for the people in the other districts, since their tributes died. There was no victory for the family of the District Four girl. I didn’t know them so I wasn’t sad but I kind of understood how sad they were. It turned out that Finnick’s Victory Tour was only the first of his many trips outside the district.

 

I’m not sure if Finnick liked me so much anymore now that he was so rich and famous. Also, he had always been handsome, but he was getting even more so as he continued growing up. He was spending most of his time with pretty women from the Capitol. Sometimes he went to the Capitol, presumably to visit them, and sometimes they visited him here in District Four. Sometimes he was supposed to meet me at our beach, but kept me waiting to be with them.

He insisted he didn’t like that and that he’d rather be here with me, but I found that hard to believe. I was no expert in boys, even after spending so much time with one I once thought was so wonderful. However, I was not stupid. Probably the only thing that was hard about it was his dick as he was fucking them. Of course he’d rather be in bed with beautiful ladies instead of sitting on the sand with little old Annie.

 

I used to believe what he said, but when it kept happening, I wasn’t so sure anymore. I wondered if he couldn’t explain things or just didn’t want to. He admitted he was keeping secrets and even said that secrets were all he had left. There was something about being a victor, something I obviously wouldn’t understand, but he seemed to be doing pretty well.

 

Then maybe I thought there was some nasty secret he was trying to keep me safe from. It seemed those Capitol people must be threatening him since he kept going to see them when he said he wanted to stay here with me. I pointed out I hadn’t left him, told him I wouldn’t and he believed that. He had made a net and I had learned how to swim – we had kept that promise and we had just made another one.

 

He went to the Capitol throughout the year, but especially when it was time for the Games. Maybe one reason he did what he did was to help get sponsors for his tributes. It didn’t work. The next year, the District Five girl won, and the District Two boy the year after that. Stephanie was near as pretty as a District One girl … or me, as my sweet Finn would insist. Ruby London tried to act like a regular District Two tough guy, but it was clear he wasn’t.

 

For my next birthday, my 16th and just 22 days until his 17th, he told me one of his secrets. “There’s only one woman whose bed I really want to be in – yours. All the people in the Capitol who ‘love’ me, they don’t compare to you. You know in your heart I’m real. They see me as only a choice fresh filet from the districts. You adore your Finn.”

“Mmmh, I do, sweetie!”

“They’re twisted almost beyond recognition by tattoos, wigs and surgeries I can’t even begin to describe. You’re naturally beautiful. That curly brown hair of yours,” he said while stroking it. “I just want to curl around you,” he said while putting his hands around me; even I knew that was more than a hug. “That glistening olive skin, I just want to eat you all up.” _Ooh, I’m feeling really funny now._ “I know I just made it difficult for you to breathe,” he said while smiling, but try, I don’t want to lose the beautiful little fishy who caught me in her net.”

“Well, can I pull you in?” I asked while smiling back. _Of course I could; why do people ask silly questions just to talk?_ He let me bring his head closer to my face so I could kiss him, then while we were still kissing, he stuck his tongue out to lick my lips. I tried to do that too, and then he put his tongue all the way into my mouth, and this felt even better than his regular kisses. It was late autumn, so nearly winter, so I don’t know why I was getting so sweaty, but I was.

I usually think so carefully about everything I do, and here I am loosening my pants. I guess I _was_ ready for Finnick to see me like that.  Still, the word _naked_ made me hesitate, although only for a second. Most everyone had seen Finnick nearly like that, but it was still a surprise when he took off his shirt in person, a very good surprise indeed. He was sweaty too, and the salty water on his skin made him shine even more. I took off my shirt. I didn’t have much underneath it, like how the girls at school often teased me, so I wasn’t wearing anything now.

I saw another reason why Finnick was so popular. This was the step where the boy puts it in the girl, so I moved my legs apart a bit. However, Finnick decided to kiss me _there_ instead, and this new kiss was even better than the other new kiss. I was screaming and moving around my bed, but in a very good way. “I wanted to make my Annie feel good…”

“And you did, you sure did!” I said still glowing from what he did to me. I put my hand on him and could barely squeeze at all it was so hard. The bulging blood vessels that made him so hard felt amazing under my fingers. I started moving my hand up and down the skin. He stood up a bit so it was in front of my mouth. People talked about sucking their boyfriends, so that’s what I did, and he eventually sprayed inside my mouth. I knew semen had a strong taste, but I figured it wouldn’t bother someone used to swallowing saltwater, and I suppose I was right.

 

“I wish I could even make love to you, but part of the threats are to leave myself for the Capitol clients. People know I’m the only one you want, so if you got pregnant it would be obvious I had been with you. Even if not, the torn hymen would be less obvious, but proof all the same, that I dared fuck the woman I actually love,” Finn explained.

 

I have a feeling I wasn’t the only girl who got Finnick Odair for her birthday, but the sole bright spot was that he really knew what he was doing when I got him. He couldn’t see me that often, but he had plenty of ideas when he did come to my bedroom. Even those trips were a risk, a risk he took just to see the glow in my eyes.

 

I barely noticed that the District Three girl Regina won the third Games after Finnick’s. I zoned out during Games season; in general I could be good at focusing on something else. Finnick tried to since he still hurt from having had to kill people, but new Games kept reminding him of it as he watched more people die. Sometimes I thought he was getting better and after another trip to the Capitol, he came back worse. Kissing me was no cure, but it was a better one than doing drugs. Most people thought it was funny when other victors did things under the influence. I knew better, I knew Finnick needed me to be there for him, like how he had been there for me at the beach and ever since.

  
            Eventually, it was about time for the fourth reaping since Finnick won, yet I thought something much more important was happening. “Finn, today’s a big day,” I told him.

            “The big day isn’t for twelve more days, Annie,” he answered.

            I figured he wouldn’t have known, but he was one of the few people who really liked listening to my stories, instead of just pretending to in order to be nice. “Before … before Panem,” I started. _I had been exposed to a bit of old history by particularly devoted teachers and had discovered much more on my own._ “People and machines sailed into space.”

            “To watch the stars from up close?”

            “Oh, Finn, the stars were still very far away, but people wouldn’t have to look through clouds and everything else in the air. It’s like looking through clear air instead of murky water. It must have been beautiful. Oh, but people could step back and look at the Earth, and get a closer look at the moon.”

            “Now, Annie, what is this big day?”

            “Some people even landed on the moon. Five hundred years ago, that happened for the first time. One of the greatest, most inspiring accomplishments ever in the history of human civilization and we ignore the half-millennium because we’ve forsaken our highest instincts to wallow in our basest ones.”


	4. Retaliation

Every victory was bittersweet when it came with twenty-three additions to the tribute cemeteries. However, each year was appealing and revolting in a different way. As for the long-ago trip to the moon, the dead kids from amongst the technologists of Three or the transportation experts of Six could very well have grown up to be the scientists to take us back there and beyond.

 

            “District Nine really needed this,” Winnow said during her post-Games victor interview. “I wasn’t even born yet when we had our last victor. Heck, my father wasn’t even born yet.” Most people took it as a joke about old man Harvest’s age. However, I read really deeply into some things, maybe too much so, and I think that said something about how unfair the Games were. Compared to them, the odds were relatively in my favor living in one of the districts that won pretty often. However, they were odds none of us should have to face, and favoring some districts helped keep many people from seeing that.

 

Even if I was reaped, someone would probably volunteer for me. It pretty much always happened in Districts One and Two, but not in Four, as Finnick knew all too well. It occasionally happened in Three, but rarely ever happened in the other districts if at all.

I would be eligible for only one more reaping, next year’s. That might not seem too bad, but everybody got another entry each year, so people were more likely to get reaped in the later years. One entry at 12, two at 13, three at 14, four at 15, five at 16, six at 17 and seven at 18 added up to twenty-eight. Thus, one fourth of the entries were in the last one seventh of the years. Poor people could get more food if they took more reaping entries. That was called tesserae. It obviously wasn’t fair compared to the richer people in their district. A lot of District Four, including my family, was well off enough to not need to do that. That made it all the worse for the few people here who had to, since they stood out. However, added entries every year in much the same way, so the odds between the age groups were the same.

 

            Older and bigger kids usually made better fighters. The deaths they caused, sometimes of each other, were more of a show for the Capitol. Generally the older ones did win, even more often than their high presence in the tribute pool would indicate. This included the 17-year-old Winnow this year. Finnick surviving an arena at 14 was all the more special. Yet I didn’t have to wonder why they reaped the younger ones. The Hunger Games were only a game to people with sick minds, and watching the butchery of the very youngest was certainly part of the twisted appeal. Also, for potential tributes themselves, the Capitol would want to stretch out the dread.

 

I was angry at the Capitol kids who never had to worry about this, or much of anything else for that matter. However, it was Capitol adults doing most of the evil things, including to my Finnick. Finnick gave what details he could stomach to repeat in hushed tones. It was scary in and of itself, yet it was downright chilling how it could disturb someone who had seen combat. Most of the people Finnick had to fuck were older. “Few youngsters can do Snow enough of a favor or pay so high a price,” Finnick started bitterly. “And even in the Capitol, the young ones rarely receive such lavish gifts.”

 

I think he was trying to reassure me of how much he hated it and how much he’d rather be with me, something I’d already known as clearly as possible for a little while now. “However, Annie, I have a secret - you’re the only one who appreciates how precious I really am,” he said to end on a positive note while starting on another positive note. He kissed me like he was stranded at sea and I was a bottle of fresh water. He even lifted me up as if to take that drink. He kissed me upside down. This was an odd precarious angle to be sure, but I still felt safe in my precious Finn’s hands anyway, and that was a magical feeling

 

Maybe Snow would die and be replaced by someone with a more level head, yet the stubborn old man kept on living. Perhaps he would grow tired of this sick game he played with Finnick and several other victors, but he did the opposite, adding the new victor Winnow to the pile. Considering how good she looked, it was no wonder she was so popular in the Capitol with those who desired females. The same went for Stephanie three years ago. Finnick said Regina, the girl from Three who won last year, was simply too plain to catch their attention.

 

Finnick said Snow seemed to exude a sick satisfaction the winter of year 69 turning into year 70. The sexual depravity seemed to be the same, so I idly wondered what that evil bastard was gloating about this time. My worries about the Capitol were soon to become much less abstract. Sure enough, it was ‘Anemone Cresta’ picked at the next reaping. There were no volunteers and I wondered why. Maybe there simply hadn’t been a good volunteer available this year.

 

I had thought the odds simply hadn’t been in my favor, but Finnick had other ideas. When I was waiting in the Justice Building for people to say their goodbyes, Finnick stormed in, rather than the somber march of my parents just before. Perhaps the Capitol had threatened potential volunteers or the trainers. It was technically illegal to train to volunteer for the Games. That part of the Capitol’s plans here would have been easy enough to carry out - threaten to actually enforce those laws against District Four. Snow must threaten the other nine districts in that regard, and was all too prepared to deliver on that threat whether or not he actually had to do so. The people responsible for Career training here must know that, telling any potential volunteers that they had to stay away this time. Perhaps that had calmed them down, saving their lives to sacrifice mine.

 

The tributes waited in fancy cells in the Justice Building. The Peacekeepers guarding those cells had quietly let my parents in and out, but I had heard them yelling at Finnick. I wonder why they didn’t come in and drag him back out. Maybe they weren’t allowed to physically damage the very handsome Mr. Odair. Perhaps they had thought it was a diversion from something else going on elsewhere, and hadn’t took what they thought was bait. Finnick explained he had finally balked at some of the Capitol demands, thinking his celebrity status would protect him, but even Finnick wasn’t special to the Capitol, and they punished him by punishing me. I suppose it was a twisted proof of how important I was to him. He gave me one kiss which I hope wasn’t our last. I was especially determined to come back not only for me, not only for him, but to subvert their attempt at retaliation.


	5. Lost At Sea

            The new sights and sounds on the way to the Capitol would have been appealing to most tributes. For the confident, a sign of the ‘glory’ to come. For most, a small bit of comfort on their way to death. For me, though, I just shut down, closing my eyes and covering my ears – but too much sound still came through my hands, and I still felt the vibrations.

 

            Lotus found me curled up in my room in the sleeper car. She was one of the mentors this year, having won twenty-four summers ago. She was naturally lighter-skinned, although not exceedingly pale, and she had tanned fairly heavily. One could see the lines, or maybe more accurately gradual changes in the pattern, when her shirt sleeves or shorts crept up. “Miss Cresta?” she asked, and went on after not getting an answer from me. “A lot of tributes are scared, you’d be foolish not to. However, the new Victor will have to have their wits about them. I know you’re a smart young woman.” She paused. “Annie.” Paused again, maybe to see if I noticed, which I sort of did. “Finnick can’t stop talking about you.”

Now I definitely noticed. I was lying down, but bolted up into a sitting position and said “Finn?!”

“All of us District Four victors know it, sweetie,” she answered, calmly yet cheerfully. “And most of us are determined to see you together.”

“Well, you’re the one to tell me how to do that,” I said, somewhat sharply.

“Stick with the other Careers. You ought to get to know your district partner, for starters,” she suggested.

 

The name came back to me, ‘Jacobus Ostia’, a boy of thirteen. He deserved this just as little as I did, just as little as we all did. He was even more bronzed than Finnick, but without my Finn’s charm or looks or the deeper things that me and few other people knew about the victor Odair.

“Hello, Anemone,” he said flatly, the first time I had been referred to by my official name in awhile. “I was thinking of volunteering, but not this young.” _Come to think of it, there had been no volunteers for him either._ Lotus whispered to me that the District Four Career Academy had been warned to not send any volunteers forth this year. Supposedly it was illegal to train for the Games and Snow had threatened to actually enforce that as part of the setup to send me into the arena. As far as we knew, ‘Jake’ had truly been picked at random.

 

Nobody was Finn, but Jake was reminding me of him anyway, and I was coming to like him. He was here five years earlier than he planned. I of all people would understand the pain of plans being interrupted. _Even when the consequences weren’t so severe, I sometimes acted like they were._ However, he still had more of an idea of what he was doing here than I did.

 

“I didn’t know they had such lovely girls in District Four,” Caesar said cheerfully. _I thought I looked bedraggled however much the stylists tried to fuss with me._ He sounded like he meant it, but showmen like him could most easily fake it, so I believed him even less than I had with Finnick at first. I suppose the Hunger Games were really just games to him and everyone else in the Capitol.

Yet I knew I had to be part of the show if I was going to come out of it alive. Pretending to care about apparently pointless social niceties was difficult for me at the best of times, yet still I somehow managed to simply smile and say “There’s at least one other guy who knows it”. Thinking of Finn was getting me through this. Even someone as special as him didn’t change who I am, but he did still have that effect on me. _Yet the odds aren’t in his favor_ , I thought to myself. “But there’s a lot you don’t know about the districts,” I added, feeling quite proud of myself.

 

The Cornucopia was at the bottom of a tall thin cliff. Even pointing my neck up all the way, I couldn’t see the top of it. The tallest tribute was the District One boy Silver, nearly seven feet tall, and even he probably couldn’t see the top of it. I realized that whatever was at the top was a pretty important part of the arena.

 

The ground between the platforms and the Cornucopia was muddy. That kept some tributes from approaching the Cornucopia or fleeing it as quickly. Only a few people died in the opening minutes, and many of those were simply finished off when the mud tripped them up.

 

Silver decided to charge the cliff, having been at least smart enough to secure all the climbing supplies in the Cornucopia. When he stepped forward, the rest of the Careers, including Jake and myself, followed. Most of the other tributes went in another direction, perhaps to get a better view of the cliff, perhaps to get away from us.

 

The rough rock meant that there were plenty of places to grip onto with hands and feet. Silver went up first and threw down ropes. Even I wasn’t too scared as we followed him.

 

There was a really damn big lake at the top behind a concrete wall. The front of the wall was slanted, maybe causing it to look like part of the cliff at first. The back, top and sides were smooth and standing straight up. We couldn’t climb it because there wasn’t much to hold onto the way there was with the cliff. However, the lake gave us plenty to drink, and once I found something to make nets out of, plenty to eat.

 

When night fell, I saw a familiar sky, indicating that the arena and my home in District Four were at similar latitudes. I traced the outside edge of the Big Dipper’s bucket to the North Star at the end of the Little Dipper’s handle, as I had done hundreds of times. Evidently the lake was to the north of the arena, as walking towards the North Star took me further away from the cliff. There was the dragon, there was the summer hunter, and several more. I tried to point these out to my comrades to help pass the time, but these five people, like many others, were not interested in smarty-pants Annie and were not afraid to admit it.

 

I heard barely any cannons over the next few days; the audience must be getting anxious and I both did and didn’t want to know what tricks the Gamemakers had up their sleeves to make things more ‘interesting’.

 

There were hills on either side of the cliff that could be used to get to the top without climbing straight up. A group of non-Careers was coming from the west; I saw their figures in the setting sun. They waited until the next evening to make their final approach so they wouldn’t have the morning sun in their eyes. I had made bigger nets and used them to help slow down the other tributes so my allies could strike. However, I missed the District Six boy in the glare. I threw myself to the ground, appropriately scared of his big sword, only to see him charge Jake. Jake threw his spear. Not only did he miss, He dropped the loop of rope tied to the blunt end that he was going to use to retrieve it. The District Six boy’s sword went right through Jake’s neck. I panicked, having been barely able to keep my cool so far and finally completely losing it.

 

I ran and swam away, spending another few days on the other side of the lake. Throughout that time, about all I could see was the sword chopping Jake’s head off. I don’t think there were many more deaths during my time in hiding. While I was in my side of the lake getting more food and drinking water, I felt a rumbling in the ground, which quickly got worse. The earthquake started cracking the dam. The rock walls on the other shore would probably shatter too and thus flood the camp of the other remaining Careers. The dam started to give way and the water rushed towards the cliff. I swam away from the recently-set sun and towards the North Star to save myself; even my powerful strokes could barely keep up, and the cannons I heard above the sound of rushing water were probably due to my fellow tributes drowning.

 

I turned up on the shore with a whole-body ache far more profound than anything else I’d ever experienced; the mad dash to avoid my own death had temporarily suppressed the fresh memories of Jake’s demise. The sight of his head rolling on the ground had come rushing back to me when I heard the all too familiar fanfare of the Panem national anthem. That introduced Claudius Templesmith’s also-memorable voice. “Ladies and gentlemen, the Victor of the Seventieth Annual Hunger Games, Anemone Cresta!” _Had I really done it?_

 

            I was dazed and confused throughout the trip back to the Capitol, the interview, the trip back to District Four. Back home, I sat on our beach, glassy-eyed, lost in deep focus as I often had been and often will be, but what I focused on had taken a drastic turn for the worse. Sometimes I barely noticed people, even Finnick, and the best of times, and this was definitely not that.

 

            Finnick barely left my side on the sand. I was being difficult, I know, but he of all people would understand why. “The arena does this to everyone”, I heard his old mentor Mags telling him in more words. “But even these really bad wounds eventually heal”. I wasn’t so sure; I guessed that Mags might be saying that to try and make me feel better.

 

            He pinned flowers in my hair and I barely noticed. He laid out a net he’d made – I barely noticed that either, and him learning how to do that had once excited me so much. However, the sight of the net and the feeling of his continued attention helped me warm back up to him.

 

            On New Years’ Eve after I won, Finnick and I visited Olive and Popeye at their Victors Village house. Olive started talking, a sweet old lady. “I know how much you two mean to each other, I’m so glad to see another victor couple, even under the circumstances that Snow put you in. My Popeye and I are getting old, but you’re still young. If you can ever marry, we’d like you to wear our rings.”


	6. Washed Ashore

Even before I escaped the arena, life hadn’t been smooth sailing for Anemone Cresta. My romance with Finnick Odair was both the best of it and the worst of it. He was best able to even try and soothe my pain. However, Snow dangled him just out of my reach.

 

Then again, ‘Finnick’ and ‘dangling’ brought on very pleasant thoughts. I had often seen him naked, his penis swinging between his legs and getting bigger and harder as he walked towards me awaiting my touch. People weren’t supposed to know about our relationship, but when I let it slip by talking about him, I got lumped in with his other admirers.

 

Olive and Popeye hadn’t given us their rings just as a new year present. They were both seriously ill with no chance for a cure, so they felt they weren’t long for this world. Sadly, they were right, both dying only a few weeks into 71 ADD. The other two victor couple had seemed pleased to see even this much of me and Finnick before they died.

 

It quickly became clearer and clearer that often only another arena survivor could understand what a victor was going through. Overall, I knew that however much you tried to learn about something, there was often no substitute for experiencing it yourself. Yet some people could come close. Even before I was sent into the arena, Finnick was the only person outside my family who could really understand me at all, and the only one who cared to.

 

However, as horrible as the memories were, becoming a victor wasn’t quite all bad. I _did_ like the money. I really wasn’t that excited about what I spent it on, although I was glad to buy nice things for me and people I knew now that I could afford to do so. Overdoing that could have rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, even in District Four where we weren’t _that_ poor by District standards.

 

I liked the coins themselves. Now I got to handle a lot more of them, and could set aside as many as I felt like. I remembered from broadcasts of the 55th Games that the District Two boy had used a coin as his token, one of his home district’s gold aurei from his birth year. I didn’t have one of those. I rarely ever saw any coins from outside the district, let alone a specific one.

 

For me, that was a major symbol of how separated Panem was - the other districts and the Capitol were part of the same country, yet they felt foreign. Even victors rarely ever came and went. Occasionally people traveled out of their district to deliver products of their home districts’ industry. Peacekeepers ensured that the interaction was kept to a minimum, but some private business did take place.

 

I had fishhook-bearing bronze assarions from every year since the Dark Days. The next smallest coin was called a half-ass, but I had a thorough accumulation of those as well. My tendency to obsess could fuel a stunning desire for completeness, highly impressive to me when achieved and highly frustrating when not. My assortment of silver denarii and their halves and quarters was somewhere in the middle. I had what seemed like a lot of gold now, both full aurei and their fractional versions, but I got used to only a few of the coins being different.

 

Districts were generally issued fresh coins bearing their local seal on one side and the Capitol’s symbol on the other. I would know, from my bags of victor winnings. The shiny sharp-featured pieces were a thing of beauty. Towards the end of a year and early in the next one, they started to run out of the old year’s coins and hadn’t made many of the new year’s coins yet. So I got a very interesting mix around then. There were even a few from before the Dark Days. Since the Games defined our country so much in general and my life in particular, it was hard to think of a time before them. Yet Panem had existed for decades if not a century or two of the Capitol pushing the districts towards their first rebellion.

 

Even my best and most inspired teachers, however much they fueled my curiosity, had done their jobs extraordinarily well, but were clearly at work. The astronomy instructor was by far my favorite amongst them. Each victor was supposed to develop a skill not necessary for their district’s industry, called a ‘talent’. Astronomy was taught for purposes of navigation at sea, so even though my formal lessons were going further and further beyond the basics, that didn’t count. Besides, the Capitol probably didn’t want me to advertise that interest, since the scale of the stars would have made their machinations look especially petty. Money and pretty trinkets, that they understood, so I brought out my bags of special coins.

 

Some victors complained that they didn’t have much to do outside of Games season. That was never a problem for Annie; I had always been more than able to occupy myself by focusing on the objects of my fancy, and now I didn’t have to worry about whether the rest of the world found them ‘productive’.

 

Even though I got sent into the arena because of Finnick, as a way to punish him, what the Capitol did to me wasn’t really his fault, so I couldn’t have blamed him for finding me less desirable because of it. However, what happened was much the opposite. Perhaps Finnick’s affection for me grew yet further as a way to compensate for the aftermath of what had happened to me. Maybe, as another victor now, I could understand him better.

 

Some people found it hard to understand Finnick’s attraction to me even before I came back from the arena even more of a wreck than I already was. Those people figured that what I’d become should’ve emboldened him to forget about me for good. Did such people know I overheard them talking like that, and did they even care? _If they didn’t understand, it was their loss_ , I told myself, but I sometimes worried if they had a point.

 

It had quickly become clear to me that that most gals wanted to be with Finnick; I eventually saw that most guys wanted to _be_ him. To the public eye, he was living the dream of fucking as many beautiful women as he could. _And ‘crazy Cresta’ is who he wants to give that up for?_ , the cruel rumors went. It was sad how thoroughly believed Snow’s lies were, doubly sad how I couldn’t dare reveal the truth. Even if people knew that Finnick found me beautiful, that he found Capitol women ugly on the inside for partaking of such arrangements, they still would have been affected by their initial impression of it as something Finnick should have enjoyed. He was just doing a job that he shouldn’t have to do. Did his ‘admirers’ in the Capitol remain aware of that, or did they truly believe my Finn was seducing or romancing them? How much was he trying to convince them? How much were they trying to convince themselves?

 

A lot about our relationship didn’t make sense. I hated how people tended to excuse or even celebrate stupidity in the name of romance, and I worried that I was doing that to myself. Love often wasn’t sensible, it seemed, but was it supposed to be? Foregoing reasonable logic was still taking me some getting used to.

 

            The Victory Tour was obviously bad for the losing districts and especially the people the fallen tributes left behind. However, I discovered that it could also be a horrible part of being the remaining tribute. I had to face people who had found out that the odds weren’t in their favor for their loved ones or even just district-mates. I hadn’t killed any tributes myself, else the encounters could’ve been even worse.

 

            The Tour ended with festivities in the victor’s home district, and as I wearily left the last of those feasts to head back to Victory Isle, I was struck by a poetic thought. Finnick and I had managed to survive separate shipwrecks only to wash up on the same unknown island. Did we have any hope of rescue?


	7. Hollow Victory

            I had long since been overwhelmed by certain sights and sounds, staring into the distance and covering my ears to try and block it out, ignore it. That often didn’t work. If light was bright enough, it still could be painfully noticeable even though my eyelids. Sound didn’t just travel through air, it went through skin and bone too. Besides, when pressing my hands to the side of my head, I couldn’t do anything else with them.

 

            The overabundance of stimuli had only gotten worse since my hollow victory in the 70th Hunger Games. Many things I observed in District Four brought back the harsh memories of my arena, and I tried even hard to avoid that than I did with usual stimuli.

 

            Some things that seemed mostly harmless to the average person still triggered me. The arena environment had been similar to my home district, which helped me survive it. However, that also left me with more reminders once I got back home.

 

Turbulent water reminded me of the flood that drowned all the other remaining tributes. We certainly had that here sometimes, so I avoided being outside during a storm or when one of the big fishing ships came back. Staring at calm water helped, as a way to address that without a full-on confrontation. Besides, the beach brought back and was still creating many happy memories, often involving Finnick.

 

Finnick had been a mentor a few times, but even if not, Snow took the opportunity of Games season to send my Finn to Capitolites with a very high sex drive and a very low moral one. However, Finn really was working with the tributes this year.

 

I would have to be a mentor eventually, but I would never get to work alongside him. Snow was sometimes petty like that, just to demonstrate that he had the power to be. Also, if people saw the latter-day District Four double-victor could together, Finnick’s act could be exposed since he would find it difficult to _not_ act in love with me.

 

So I spent the first Games after my own back home on Victory Isle with the rest of our district’s arena survivors. It turns out that they watched most of the broadcasts together in one of the homes. Nice old Mags was glad to have the guests. 2 Victory Isle was for once a busy place. Since viewing the Games was one of the Capitol’s most important mandates, Peacekeepers were there to ensure we were paying attention. However, this team didn’t look too attentive themselves. Maybe they didn’t care too much about their job, so they were doing it half-assed. Peacekeepers were people too, indoctrinated with Capitol propaganda though they were. Or perhaps they didn’t expect much trouble out of the District Four VIP’s.

 

I heard the other Career districts had similar viewing parties, as it were. It helped to be surrounded by supportive folks like that, and that positive feedback loop had to amongst the various factors contributing to our relative success. We didn’t dwell on how this further worsened the outer districts’ chances, but some of us cared about that more than others.

 

District One would have a lot to celebrate this year, it seemed. Their female tribute, Sapphire Silversmith, was the most beautiful woman any of us had ever seen. Tallest too (even men were rarely that tall), in case seemingly every other part of her body wasn’t enough. I’m straight, but I’m not blind. During her appearances, the Peacekeepers suddenly started paying more attention. “48-30-42? Only if she’s six six!” one of them called out. Peacekeepers were men too (most of them anyway), forbidden from marriage or children though they were.

 

Her presence was a reminder of what most people considered beautiful, a category that did not include me. Finnick wasn’t the only one telling me I was beautiful anyway, which helped me tell myself that. A couple of girls must’ve seen me as they made the cruel comparison. “Sapphire is the kind of woman you’d expect to see a man as handsome as Finnick with – charming with big chest islands instead of some withdrawn girl with mosquito-bite boobs.” _They’re the kind of people I’d like to be withdrawn from_ , _so darn shallow,_ I thought. That was a problem with being smart especially in the way I was – I couldn’t tolerate the large amount of unintelligent people out there.

It began to dawn on me that this might be one of Snow’s mind games. Even the average teenage girl wasn’t so mean so consistently. I tried to brush off the bullying, at least outside, however much it stung inside. I had been determined to not let it provoke me. Thinking it might be coming from Snow’s agents made me even more resolved. Were they girls whose minds were poisoned early in life? The Career districts were certainly full of people infected with Capitol propaganda from an early age. Were they women so petite you thought they were girls unless told otherwise? I had a teacher like that once. There was nothing petite about the woman they were comparing me to, that’s for sure.

 

“Sapphire Silversmith, ten,” Caesar said to begin the training score announcements.

“Damn, I thought she was a perfect twelve,” the lustful Peacekeeper called out. I guessed he was sexually frustrated to be so set off even by a woman like that. Finnick never had that attitude. His heart and mind ached for me, which I thoroughly believed by now, but I had to admit that his body had to be satiated. Besides, maybe some guys were calmer with that kind of stuff anyway, and my Finn was one of them.

If I had the social skills and the body that she did, I’d be flirtatious too, I thought as I observed her behavior. At the end of her interview, she told Caesar “Oh, I know damn well I’m a pretty face, and all the boys back home know it too, but I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t something more than that”. That seemed to be the typical strategy of One’s lady volunteers. As usual, I wondered if they could they actually fight well enough to live up to the boasting. The high training score was a sort of proof, but not absolute.

 

Sometimes it was unclear who the victor would be until the final showdown, as with Livia over Julius at the end of the 55th. Anything could happen any given August, so the victor could be totally unexpected. I suppose I had been one of those, much to Snow’s dismay.  However, the result could be clear right from the beginning, and the 71st games were shaping up to be one of those. Once she got a sword in her hand, the other 23 were done for, even though it took a few days.

 

“That was a four-foot blade, a wonderful weapon,” she said enthusiastically. “48 inches,” she added, spelling it out for the dimwits. “I told ya _the girls_ weren’t the only 48’s I had in my favor.” _‘The girls’_ must be the breasts she was jiggling to the massive approval of the audience.

 

I knew better than most what happened to such attractive victors. Would she be so spirited after lying under repulsive Capitol men doing the disgusting things they ordered her to? Finnick might’ve been even more hurt by the city’s perverts if he didn’t have visits with me and the hope of a more substantial future. Oh, it helped, but we weren’t magic cures for each other. All the skill Finn and now Sapph had demonstrated in the arena, and yet they seemed powerless against the Capitol’s whims. That was a major hidden purpose of the Games, after all, to demonstrate to the districts the full extent of the Capitol’s power.


	8. Break In The Storm

            Having Finnick just out of reach was definitely the worst part of us being victors, but sometimes it seemed like the only significant bad part. The clanging outs of a trident striking something (well, someone) would always be with him, the roar of the earthquake-induced tsunami always with me. However, they would get quieter as that faded into the past (or we raced away from them into the future?). As wonderful as Finnick was, or would be, he wasn’t everything. Nothing against him, no lover was. Or so my parents insisted in a sort of an attempt to soothe me. It seemed sensible enough, but then again, since I fell in love with Finnick, I had been less sensible.

 

            Even I could find only so much to occupy myself in the empty hours of a victor’s life. Some victors continued with their past work in their district’s industry if only for something to do. Cresta Nets was still in business, but now we made only the quantity we felt like. We could afford to give them away, but sold them at plausibly low prices. Dad didn’t want to stir up resentment amongst the other net-weavers, or the fishers that didn’t get ahold of our limited production.

 

I even caught bits and pieces of the Capitol gossip media. I had some interest in what my fellow victors were doing. Those in other districts were limited in what they could tell us. Besides, in addition to the truth, I wanted to know what the Capitol wanted people to think was the truth.

 

The glossy celebrity magazine _Where Are They Now?_ had pictured Sapphire with Vulcan Steele, son of United Steel owner Hephaestus Steele. I knew how to read between the lines because my Finn lived between them. Sometimes a victor had to pretend to seduce or be seduced by a Capitolite, but in actuality, they got the “victor’s services” as a gift from another Capitolite. Finn said that when someone purchased him as a prostitute for themselves there was only so much either of them could do to create a romantic fantasy out of it because they both knew the truth. Maybe Sapphire still had Vulcan believing. Also, the reasonably attractive young Capitolites like Vulcan were glad to be seen with “their” victors publically. With the less attractive (like maybe his crippled old father), it was kept entirely in private so as to maintain plausible deniability.

 

            As I often did when faced with such highly unpleasant things, I retreated into thoughts I found more positive. The jumble of coins in the January 1st 72 batch of victor winnings was nothing special; I had most of them by now. The shiny new 72-dated pieces wouldn’t have been ready on New Year’s Day. I expected to start to see those on February 1st. When I got home and opened the bag, I certainly got that! However, I hadn’t expected what looked like a set of one of each denomination from the Capitol and every district _but_ Four. _Well, I’d find the local pieces soon enough._

            That pleasantly unusual mixture amounted to $18,000 in gold, $672 in silver, $90 in bronze and even 60c in aluminum. However, as awesome as this $18,762.60 was, I expected $20,000 and wanted everything the Capitol owed me just on principle. It turns out a 13th sub-bag made up the exact difference with a mix of aluminum, bronze and silver. They were all tarnished old District One pieces. _Wait, they had recent dates and were oddly stained_. The bluish purple may have come from iodine. The gem sapphire was composed of different materials but had a similar color. _Wouldn’t my chemistry teacher be proud of me now?_ I realized that the woman Sapphire made a point of wearing her namesake color and must’ve noticed the Talent of one of her fellow victors. When the Victory Tour came here in a few days, I’d display some of the marked coins from her to show that I’d gotten the message.

 

            Maybe the Silversmiths were actually involved in making silver coins. A lot of people had last names that were the name of some job or another. (I didn’t know what an ‘Odair’ was, but I did know I wanted to get ‘Odaired’). Such names for district people were often related to the districts’ industry, so they might actually do the job their name said they did, but not always. It was surprising for a Capitolite to have to work at all, preparing to run his father’s factory it seemed, let alone work at something that matched their name.

            Some other last names referred to a parent’s first name, or, more likely, the first name of an ancestor’s parent. Sometimes a name looked like the word for son or daughter in some old language. Once I had toured the mayor’s house, and I saw a book about an Ivan son of Dennis that the mayor _definitely did not!_ want me reading.

 

            As with the Games themselves, we victors watched the Victory Tour together. When it stopped in District Four, we were grouped together in public, but for the rest of the tour, we gathered at Mags’ house again. The broadcast of the tour began as usual with the not so lucky winner emerging on the platform of the District Twelve train station.

 

            Sapphire was in a form-fitting deep blue dress, carrying something pink on her hip. When I voiced that thought, Hook of the 57th Games pointed out that she had plenty of form to fit. Some of the District Twelve boys also observed that in a way, with an assortment of whistles and gestures. People like Hook sometimes talking like that outside her presence didn’t seem so bad.

She panned the crowd and stared, reaching for her hip. She apparently had little tolerance for such abuse in person, however small, whether despite or because of the massive abuse she suffered in the Capitol. I didn’t have to put up with much if any of that, but I knew both logically and emotionally that she didn’t deserve that, however pretty she was and however much her clothes showed that off.

All she revealed was the identity of the pink object – a sword hilt in a simple pattern but more than just a T, still very much attached to its blade. Pink weaponry did seem like something a District One female tribute would do. Satisfied that she had made her point, she returned it to its sheath, about the same color as her dress. “That’s the kind of gift you get when a bigshot at a weapons manufacturer is one of the hundreds of thousands of men with their eyes on you,” she pointed out cheerfully with an air of self-satisfaction.

She had jokingly pointed her weapon at catcallers in the Districts, but I figure she symbolically very seriously aimed it at rapists in the Capitol. That hopeful gesture certainly contributed to the recent break in the storm.


	9. Hollow Victory Part II

            The hope that bubbled up from Sapphire’s Victory Tour stunt seemed to be evident only in other victors. Most people of Panem didn’t know the truth of her blade brandishing, thinking she was just taking issue with small-fry horndogs, although many women tired of that applauded her on those grounds. The tour did hit some rough spots when she rode into some districts carrying a weapon much like the one she had killed their sons and daughters with. Whose idea was that? Probably Snow’s. It seemed like his kind of heavy-handed assertion of authority.

 

            I had out-survived the other people trapped in the arena with me. Most Careers aimed to out-fight them. Non-Careers not resigned to their imminent deaths also tended to have one of those strategies, but didn’t overall favor one approach or another. Sapphire had the size and strength to use a big sword in a brute-force hack-and-slash manner; most young women would not. Since they were facing similarly heavily trained young men, those ladies generally defaulted to other tactics. Some wielded lighter and smaller blades with clever movements. The District Two female trend of throwing knives went back to at least Livia and Enobaria’s success in the 55th and 62nd Games.

 

            The Career districts had a sort of professional respect for the others’ victors, and we didn’t have as many grounds to complain, so Sapphire’s stops in Four and Two went relatively smoothly. However, we sometimes banded together against the other districts rather than against the Capitol, which the Capitol must find awfully convenient. _Often other people didn’t realize things that seemed obvious to me._

 

            When Sapphire came here and I subtly held one of the blue-tinted coins up for her to see, I became one of the few women she smiled at over the course of the Tour.

 

            The victors’ return home, the least conflicted part of the blasted ritual, often stood out. This year was no exception. It was particularly striking how welcomed she was amongst her fellow District One victors, and how much many of the District One kids admired them all. With both the victors and district commoners, this especially meant other ladies. Since the games were built around a gender divide secondarily to separation by district, it wasn’t surprising to see a bit of that reaction.

 

            After the 71st Victory Tour, life went on much as it had before including my Finn being taken away from the woman he loved. Finn told me some things, but thankfully spared me the worst of the details. Snow made Finnick put on a farce. The glib gossip media ‘coverage’ merely talked about how little Finn was putting on; they were more right than they knew. I could barely tolerate reading that, but I felt I had to remain aware of the official angle. Sometimes my obsessions could be rather dangerous.

Knowing the situation that produced those beefcake pictures of Finnick drowned any joy that could come from them. He was sent off to many women and a few men who at best lusted after him and at worst enjoyed torturing him, and the Capitol seemed to have plenty of people who combined the depths of both voids.

They wanted him, and I couldn’t blame them for having functional eyesight, but for taking something, someone not freely given? That I wanted them on the bottom of the ocean for. Capitolites knew no limits on their pleasure, however much that came at the expense of pain in the Districts. That was how the whole country was run, just with this as one of the most visible apexes of it. What was supposedly the dalliances of the country’s most eligible bachelors and bachelorettes was President Snow’s forced prostitution racket, just another one Panem’s dark secrets.

Sapphire put on a girlfriend act for Vulcan Steele, and Finnick undoubtedly put on a boyfriend act for some of those clients. Since those fuckers didn’t know the bodies were not freely given, I wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

Some took a sick twisted pleasure not only from forcing sex and particular acts thereof, but also extorting that from physical wonders rendered powerless by Capitol authority.

Gloss was one of the few other men in that trap, but there were several women besides Sapphire – the other District One victors Emerald and Cashmere, but also Stephanie from Five, and Winnow from Nine.

Cecelia Weaver and Rubeus London were relatively young, but both visibly and happily married back in their home districts. Some like me were too plain or different to draw the Capitol’s warped interest in our bodies. I didn’t see Enobaria – maybe her attitude would have been off-putting, maybe it would have been even more appealing to pretend to tame the beast. The same could have gone for Livia before her, but I wouldn’t know, that being before my time.

Victors knew each other especially well, but Finnick was especially familiar with that small group of our small group. Their shared situation was often particularly shared, them being shipped off to the same orgies. That wasn’t publicized, it being too close to the truth of the fellow victor Finnick really wanted to be with.

 

My first year mentoring was shaping up well – Titania seemed like she had the skill and attitude to take herself to the top, and plain enough to avoid paying one of the worst costs of victory. Johanna Mason, the female from Seven, stood out in a bad way. The arena had been dry scrubland instead of us in our wet element, so I had gotten a bit worried.

After Titania let loose on Johanna with a burst of taunting, my tribute took a thrown axe in the back. Johanna’s skill revealed, she began to reveal it further. After that killing, she took on all three of the male Careers at once, and killed them all.

Everyone including Titania and myself had underestimated Johanna. In retrospect, her weak act in training and early in the arena had almost been laid on too thick, but I wouldn’t have been the one to notice such things, and Titania wouldn’t have been the one to heed such notices. Arrogance was often a Career tribute’s downfall. Losing her from a distance would hurt, but not as much as losing Jacobus Ostia in front of my eyes and nearly losing myself.

 

Johanna’s body would have been awfully appealing to Capitolites, but I never picked up any gossip about her. The initial, obvious, clear reaction was to be happy she was not debased in that manner, but my mind knew that Snow must have extracted a terrible price from her. Livia had been _popular_ a few years ago. While she was only in her mid-thirties now, the Capitol appetite for youth strictly defined was insatiable. Come to think of it, continuing to look through the archives, there had been as little about Haymitch Abernathy as Johanna Mason. Pictures from before he became a wreck showed that while he was no Finnick, he had hardly hurt the eyes. Would Jo also be driven to drink by a hollow victory?


	10. Ripples Of Hope

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapters 1 through 9 are canon-compliant, with lots of details added that didn’t contradict canon. This chapter is an AU with the same POD as Gale’s Hunger Games, in Annie’s POV.

            The 73rd Games had gone fairly normally, as normally as such a twisted pageant could go, with another Career victor – Maria of Two. I didn’t have to watch ‘my’ tribute die, being taken off mentoring thanks to a tough first year and an abundance of District Four victors to rotate with. The outer district victors didn’t have such relief – no wonder they tended to drink like fishes or partake of some other drugs.

 

            The 74th Games were quickly shaping up to be anything but normal, right from the reapings.

 

After two volunteers for those Games, District Four drew none for the next one. Well, with our volunteers getting six feet of sand three years running, it seemed particularly sensible for them to lose their nerve. I had won after being randomly reaped with no willing volunteers, or so the general populace of District Four believed. That lent confidence to the sixteen year old Pearl and twelve year old Alex, but was that misplaced?

 

I tried not to become too attached to them, admittedly easy for me, especially since I didn’t have to mentor them. My people skills or lack thereof made me a poor mentor anyways, especially when talking to potential sponsors that may well be amongst the people who hurt my Finn so. Indeed, Finnick said that some of the people he had to fuck or get fucked by were sponsors. It wasn’t just two activities for people who had more money than they knew that to do with – some people sponsored tributes they wanted to get from Snow as a victor.

 

The reapings were held at different times throughout the day. District folk were too occupied with their own to watch the others live even if they cared to, which for good reason they didn’t. However, Capitol media was only too happy to broadcast the highlights, with idiotic commentary.

 

The girl from District Two was volunteering at fifteen. After Finnick won at fourteen, perhaps this Clove wanted the special touch of being another young victor. Some people wanted to stand out even amongst their fellow Careers and victors generally. Eighteen year olds like the young man from Two were the Career norm, but slightly younger volunteers like the pair of seventeen year olds from One weren’t quite unheard of. Volunteers from the outer districts were absolutely unheard of, which was more than understandable, and yet District Twelve had produced two! An Everdeen for another, a Hawthorne for another. In this everyone saw loud and clear what love did for sisters and brothers, and even I was no exception. Snow probably noticed how strong his family-threat leverage would be should one of those two win.

 

            The girl from One was very pretty although in a different way than her recent predecessor. While Sapphire was full-figured, Glimmer was fairly petite. I was excluded from either conventional definition, yet some saw my beauty anyway. Katniss seemed like she could have a similar unconventional attractiveness in addition to the obvious appeal of her stunt with her sister. As for the boys, Cato of Two was definitely what this country generally recognized as handsome. Gale of Twelve had a chance of seeing that brother again, having even a drop of the same swarthy appeal Finnick had. Thresh of Eleven was darker still, and was certainly one of the biggest and strongest of this year’s tributes. However, the initial Reaping look was often deceiving – simply being big didn’t always translate well to an arena, and there were always some smaller tributes with something lurking in the depths. Like me. I wasn’t sure who I wanted to join us if not one of the District Four kids.

 

            District Twelve surprised everybody at the Reaping. Their stylists surprised everyone once those tributes were delivered to the Capitol. The first eleven pairs of tributes rode in wearing the usual impressive – or unimpressive – district-themed costumes. Twelve was usually one of the latter, with its minors in miner outfits and covered in coal dust. Not this year. Katniss and Gale rode in dressed all in black and lit on fire. It was clear they were imitating burning lumps of coal. I suppose it was done with flame retardant fabric.

I didn’t think about the technical details much, since firefighting wasn’t a big concern in District Four thanks to the abundance of seawater. It was one of the uses of water where the salty stuff was acceptable – Three or Six just had to make the pumps corrosion-resistant, and regular water had to be used for electrical fires because saltwater carried electricity so well.

I did think about the impact. The crowd in the Capitol drank it up. Games broadcasts usually didn’t show other districts’ reactions until the friends and family of the final eight were interviewed, but the people watching with me here in District Four sat stunned. Twelve had followed up its extraordinary volunteerism with an extraordinary performance in the Tribute Parade.

 

The tributes ate dinner together as their first meal in the Training Center. A Capitol staffer was going over some instructions for the benefit of both the tributes and the audience. I was used to that spiel and had tuned it out. Apparently so had Cato. “Hey lady, cut the crap, I’m starving,” he snapped.

Gale was evidently more annoyed about Cato’s complaint than he was about waiting for the food, answering with “You have no idea! Try feeling empty even after tesserae and get back to me on that!” The analysts had correctly guessed that the two of them would be key enemies, and the fight was getting off to an early start. Gale clearly had his district partner and several other outer-district folks on his side with that dose of truth.

They were soon let loose on the food. Gale and Cato got into another verbal scuffle when the young man from Twelve went over to the Careers’ section of the eating tables.

 

When they all got into the training gym the third morning, Katniss’ archery skills were the main surprise. Otherwise it was the usual Career showboating and a smattering of success, struggling and hopelessness amongst the others. Cato got into a regular nonverbal scuffle with his counterpart from Six, who had supposedly taken his knife. The girl from Eleven actually had it, and smirking as she hid in the rafters holding it. Clever little Rue was getting along rather well with Katniss. There seemed to be a big alliance of non-Careers shaping up; I hoped my inner-district fellows were taking them seriously.

 

Late morning on the fifth day, Katniss raced her new friend Rue through the climbing structures. Katniss jumped off after winning and caught Rue when she followed. They ended public training on a high note as they had with the tribute parade.

The fifth afternoon was devoted to each tribute giving individual private demonstrations to the group of Gamemakers, as opposed to observing parts of the crowd earlier in the week. That was part of keeping the tributes’ strategies secret; there were a lot of conversations between tributes and mentors that were also not broadcast. Those performances were rated, the scores being an indicator of the tribute’s ability or lack thereof. The training scores could directly affect the results by being a major influence on sponsors.

 

Most of the sixth day was another lull in broadcasting the tributes themselves – this was always a welcome break for those sick of the Games and sick of watching them. The private scores were announced right before public interviews that evening. The Careers all came close to the high end of the 1 to 12 scale, although our kids from District Four didn’t come as close as I would have liked. Both of the District Eleven tributes did relatively well, but District Twelve again finished strong – Katniss had apparently shot her way to an 11 of all things, and Gale netted himself a high score as well.

 

Like her predecessor Sapphire, Glimmer did not tolerate being catcalled. _The only thing I' flash you is a blade_ , she must’ve wanted to tell the Capitol audience. She fell back on “I have a boyfriend, you know.” _And if he doesn’t whoop you, I will._

Apparently he was here with her. Cato had already said he was the son of a fallen tribute who had left a pregnant girlfriend at home. _The arrogance of both of them!_ Here he was supporting the system that had taken his father. _Even as a fellow Career, that’s hard to understand._ And then Cato goes and falls in love with his competition. _He goes public about Glimmer after days and Finnick can’t go public about me after years? Seems fishy._

The Games had looked like they’d come down to traditional Career advantages versus the sentimental appeal of the pair of Twelve. Now Glimmer and Cato had both going for them.

 

I liked how clever Marissa of Five was, but I worried if that would do her any good. Rue was a little heartbreaker. Thresh made it clear what he thought of being here, brushing off Caesar’s charm with simple yes-or-no answers.

 

Katniss was trying to appeal to the audience because she knew she had to but was having trouble. I of all people would understand. Caesar was friendly as usual though, used to working with difficult tributes, and brought out comments about the food and the clothes, at which point she showed off her dress.

Then she struck back at Cato’s announcement. Apparently she was also in love with one of her fellow tributes, having long since known her district partner. Gale was only too glad to confirm this, before anchoring the obvious family loyalty point. As with his outburst at the opening dinner, he was making it clear how bad life could be in the most abused of the districts.

 

In retrospect it was obvious, how close each couple was during public training and how they looked at each other – glances of desire I would know from Finnick that he dearly wished he could give me more often.  Perhaps the food on her plate wasn’t the only sausage Glimmer had that first night – if those two fell in love so quickly, they may well have started fucking nearly as soon. So there seemed to be some truth to both couples, but since it meant a good show, did the Capitol care whether it was an act?

 

I think seeing this year as just a high-water mark in Games showmanship would be selling it short. Even I felt the emotional deluge. Two couples torn apart, or kept together as they went to tribute cemeteries together. At least one who really would die to save their younger sibling from that fate. The Career districts besides mine had great hope of another victory, and District Twelve of its first victory in nearly a quarter century, but more than what district would win the Games, there were the beginnings of hope for changing the Games themselves.


	11. Waves Of Hope

            The only rest the tributes would have on the seventh day would be that heralded by a death cannon. The Games started the morning of August 7th. They’d get what sleep they could the night of August 6th. It would be hard to rest at the time they most needed to, especially with the kind of sleeping Glimmer and Cato or Katniss and Gale might be doing. After all, the beds were more than big enough even for two people. I had entered the 70th arena well rested either despite Finnick not being there to calm me or because he wasn’t there to keep me up. The Games could very well come down to how sharp the tributes’ reactions were in the initial skirmish, not to mention the order in which they were randomly placed around the Cornucopia.

 

The Careers sometimes added exceptional tributes from other districts to our alliance. The pairs from Eleven and Twelve made it loud and clear they wanted nothing to do with us, but Nathan was interested. He was clever like many District Three tributes, and with Marvel being a few scales short of a fish, Nathan didn’t have much competition as the brains of the operation.

 

            There was one group meal when the tributes arrived. There was another right now, the breakfast before the tributes were flown to the arena. It would be the last meal of a lot of the people eating it, and that showed, however much they were trying to put on a brave face.

 

Information about the arena was treated as seriously as major military secrets. The tributes knew nothing about the arena until they were launched into it, and the audience didn’t either. It was part of pretending that the Games offered a fair chance to each tribute. Of course, the reality was anything but. My district and the first two were the only districts allowed to train would-be volunteers. In general, the districts that were somewhat less abused would produce healthier tributes. What a child learned about their district industry and when they learned it might be different throughout the country, which could skew the odds for some and against others in addition to the particular skills an arena called for. Keeping arena details away from the audience helped keep them from leaking to the tributes, and the surprise would add to the viewing spectacle.

 

The tributes had a minute to take in the arena, a delay enforced by landmines near each starting platform. It was some sort of temperate forest. Would that help the District Seven tributes? That pair hadn’t looked too impressive anyway, although Johanna Mason had faked being weak until it was too late for my Titania and the other tributes.

 

            Katniss had a bow and arrows waiting for her in the mouth of the Cornucopia. The arena was planned and built well in advance, but this certainly seemed like one of the minor details that the Gamemakers could change to customize the arena after seeing the tributes. The Careers tended to rush for their weapons of choice; I didn’t see why an outer district tribute _with_ a weapon of choice would be much different. However, the archery set being in such a central spot would place her right in the middle of the usual Cornucopia bloodbath.

 

            Katniss could really run, easily winning a footrace towards the bow that had mainly been against Glimmer. Other tributes may have wanted the bow if only to keep it out of Katniss’ hands. _Now that Katniss had run towards it, could she run back out with it?_

Some other tributes who had gotten to weapons were already putting them to use. District Four’s own Alex began the slaughter, grabbing a spear and running down the slow boy from Ten. It wasn’t pretty, but nobody in their right mind expected it to be, especially picking off the most unlucky tributes early on.

Rue was long gone, having begun to implement the strategy she had announced to Caesar as “if they can’t catch me, they can’t kill me”. Cato singled out Ashton, the boy from Six, for the alleged knife theft. The kill was one of those that stood out even by the standard of arena brutality – Cato grabbed Ashton and snapped his neck, pushing the body down to go find more weapons and targets for them. I went into a bit of shock at the reminder of Jacobus Ostia’s beheading. _A long-ago rebellion he didn’t commit led him to die for a recent theft he didn’t commit._ Anger at the bitter irony shook me out of my daze somewhat.

Marvel cleanly stabbed a tribute with Nathan bludgeoned another; I was surprised I caught even those details in the chaos. The District Three boy was going through the supplies as his fellow Careers were surrounding Katniss.

Glimmer had detoured to grab a long knife and was charging Katniss when Gale tripped her up. She managed to fall smoothly, not landing on top of her blade or slamming into the ground, and managed to escape Gale’s grasp. However, this distracted Katniss just long enough to lose a fleeting opportunity to take a shot at Cato. Unfortunately, my fellow District Four female was Katniss’ new target. _Not Pearl!_ , I thought as she fell back with an arrow in her heart. The bloodbath did not give anyone time to mourn, though. Katniss dodged one of Clove’s knives, and Thresh kept the District Two girl from getting off another good throw. Alex speared another frail tribute, and Katniss self-righteously made him her next target.

 

In an ironic way, one of the District Twelve pair most deserved to live after so readily risking death for their siblings’ sake. Many people had naturally gravitated towards this year’s love stories, none more so than Finnick and myself. We had leaned towards Katniss and Gale because they too had waited, for some reason or another. Someone besides Katniss winning wouldn’t resuscitate Pearl or Alex. Yet I lost sympathy for the District Twelve girl because she was the particular one to send my district’s tributes home dead. After all, I was only human.

 

The other Careers brought about a total of three more early deaths. The carnage at the very beginning of the Games was so thick that the Capitol didn’t try to clean up the bodies one by one. Ten cannons went off and one mortician’s hovercraft swept in. It retrieved the corpses with a claw – nobody was ever in an arena with the tributes during a Games.

 

Gale had gotten some of the best supplies while his girlfriend had been busy with some of the best weaponry. The two had gotten separated during the chaos at the Cornucopia, and Samuel, the District Eight boy, zeroed in on Gale. Sam was one of the tributes that had survived the bloodbath by avoiding the Cornucopia, but he might not survive for much longer due to the resultant lack of supplies. So he needed Gale’s pack bad. He tried to tackle Gale but was off-balance, enabling Gale to easily hold him down and choke him. So Gale had faced more of a fight than Cato, but just as surely killed with his bare hands.

 

It was clear how incredibly happy Katniss and Gale were to find each other safe for now, and Glimmer and Cato also savored a moment alone after Clove delivered the death blow to a Career quarry and the group made camp. Gale had managed to catch some small game. Him and Katniss made a fire; it was clear they were very good at such things. Their sponsors sent down a loaf of bread to make a meal out of it. Both couples had shared discussions too quiet for the microphones to pick up.

 

The Career supply pile was pretty much always formidable, since we could go through the Cornucopia at our leisure, instead of grabbing a few items and getting out of there. Nathan had figured out how to reactivate the landmines that had secured the platforms in the opening minute, and wanted to move them to be around the supplies. Much of the Careers’ second and third day was occupied with using shovels for their intended purpose.

Nathan’s cleverness was one of the few things besides the love stories that had drawn much spectator attention. The Careers drew a lot of sponsor money anyways, but was Glimmer and Cato’s situation making them do even better? Were Katniss and Gale diverting the usual sponsor money or were they bringing out new contributors? _That part of tribute mentoring I understood._

 

Gale had laid traps for both people and food animals. _You’d have to be darn good at the snare station for the Gamemakers to give you a ten over it, and apparently he was._

 

Glimmer had hacked apart the next tribute the Careers caught, and it had literally made her sick. There was no such thing as telepathy, but I wished I could tell her that us victors understood. The pair from Five raided Katniss and Gale’s camp. Marissa was smart enough to get away, but Christopher was not. However, Marissa had proved herself unable to identify some poison berries, collapsing instantly during the middle of the fourth day, August 10th. That night, Clove casually killed Nathan like it was nothing; sometimes the disintegration of the Career alliance could be just that anticlimactic.

 

Reaching the final eight tributes tended to be a key event in the Games, and this year was no exception. When the surviving tributes were all awake, the broadcast cut to Claudius’ booth for a very special announcement.

 

I had a feeling that the impact of what he said would go beyond just these Games. “Attention tributes! I have a special announcement. We are now down to the final eight, including both members of both couples. If either couple are the final two, they may win together. Also, there’s a baby on the way and a marriage, but for different pairs.”

 

 _So the Capitol was trying to cut their losses by only breaking up one of the couples._ Pregnancy test results could well have been one of the many things whispered between tributes. Somebody must’ve gone through their district’s marriage ritual, but not being from those districts, I wouldn’t know what to look for.

 

I wouldn’t have wanted to be Clove, Rue, Marvel or Thresh last night. I really wouldn’t have wanted to be one of them right now. However, it was unbelievably great news for Finnick and myself as well as the two couples in the arena. The odds were in the favor of one couple or another. The couple that had gone through a marriage ritual would no doubt want to do that again for real. The other young man would face greater than usual pressure to marry the mother of his child. Besides, sharing such a terribly unique experience, they’d make a particularly good couple.

If Snow was smart, not just sadistic for its own sake, he’d make a joint ceremony out of it in order to control my and Finnick’s resentment, although that definitely was not a given.

 

It was quite likely that a soon to be mother and father would be joining Finn and I as victors. I imagined Finnick having as much love for a child of ours as he already had for me. We were still young, in our early twenties, but had already waited more than long enough to be fully together, and wouldn’t wait any longer for this.

Children. I wanted to give them the joy of siblings, something we had never had. What parent didn’t want their children to have a better lot in life? I didn’t even tell Finnick. It would have been too heartbreaking if those plans for our future were also crushed.

 

This year’s ripples of hope had become a wave.


	12. Flood Of Hope

Media Blitz

 

            The friends and family of the final eight tributes were always interviewed, but those media crews were an unfamiliar sight in Districts Eleven or Twelve. That was a relatively minor detail of how this had been a very unusual year. The crews had evidently traveled during the night or early morning so they could be in place right after The Announcement.

 

Career Singletons

 

            As expected, Clove and Marvel’s families were some of the few people not behind one or the other of the couples.

            “Don’t you count out my boy just yet,” Marvel’s mother muttered. That was hope, but not the kind of hope many of us were feeling. Maybe they didn’t get it – being a few scales short of a fish often ran in a family, whether by nature, nurture or both.

 

“That Cato turned down my little girl, my deadly little girl, and is about to find out just how deadly she is,” Clove’s father said with a mix of emotions. Those in each district’s Career training often knew each other, sometimes very well. This had been Cato’s last Reaping, but Clove was three years younger – obviously, if they were a couple, she would have waited, because nobody would’ve seen this year’s rule change coming. Maybe them not being a couple had to do with why she didn’t wait. She certainly had shown more than enough attitude to pull a stunt like that.

Clove’s sister had the bearing of another Career – the aggressiveness and the fairly justified confidence were some of the emotions I did recognize, and the training had long since started, even by little Flavia’s tender young age. “She’ll get ‘em all,” Flavia said of her big sister.

 _And I’ll be right behind her,_ she seemed to say without actually saying. Since we couldn’t technically prepare to volunteer for the Games, part of our training was to not let on about our training. Also, a good showing in these interviews might lead to a final sponsorship push that could make the displayed hopes a reality. Some people hoped for a change in the Games; the youngest Hawkins seemed to want them to stay the same.

 

Couples

 

The friends and family of each of the four lovers all expected their pair to come back home – my fellow Career districts were doubly confident, and for once Twelve had a reason to feel like that at all.

 

A reporter approached Glimmer’s father with a version of the question that was on everyone’s mind. “Are you the father-in-law or the grandfather?”

“Both, if he knows what’s good for him,” he answered with a chuckle, knowing the middle-aged craft worker couldn’t make serious threats to a fighter in his prime. “I worried if I’d get my little girl back. Now I hope I’ll get a grandchild and a son-in-law back with her.”

Cato was not entirely sane, no person who approaches the Games with such zeal ever is, but he should be enough in his right mind to realize how much the odds were in his favor to have a woman like Glimmer. _I still wondered sometimes if Finnick was crazy to love a woman like me, however disgusting his Capitol alternative could be._

 

            Like Clove, Glimmer had a little sister that looked like a miniature version of her. “Glim always said that lil’ shiny, that’s me, got her to want a little girl of her own. I’m not surprised she’s going ahead and getting one, especially with such a handsome guy, in such a situation.” _Overall, the one fetus this year seemed to affect the audience more than the twenty-three already born children every year. That made no sense whatsoever, but people often didn’t make sense to me._ “She’d want a big fancy wedding, not a simple one in camp.”

 

            In some ways Cato’s mother had a similar attitude to that of Glimmer’s father – worried about a child, incredibly relieved to now expect another child. “I was afraid the wrong girl would be the end of him, nothing else could stop him of course. Apparently what we have here is the right girl making it even more likely that I’ll get someone back from the arena for once. And ‘Grandma Teresa’ don’t sound too bad, no not at all.”

 

            The little sister Katniss was in the arena to save was an absolute darling. Nobody in the audience, so nobody in Panem, would soon forget Primrose Everdeen. Gale’s brother Rory was a sweetheart too. This put faces, very cute faces, to the escort-called names that had stirred such furor in their older siblings. And the two of them holding hands? Little girls and grown women who thought like little girls would be going absolutely wild. For me, it removed the last vestiges of spite against Katniss after she killed the District Four tributes in the bloodbath, and I was not alone in that sentiment.

            Their mothers were losing composure, though in a good way. “Tears of joy,” Mrs. Hazelle Hawthorne got out before catching her breath and clearing her throat. “Apparently my boy is unofficially a married man now. When they toasted bread together the first night, we all knew that was a key part of our district’s marriage ritual.”

“I’m not exactly surprised,” she continued. “Most everyone around here knows how close those two are to each other. Some said there was nothing between them, but more accurately, there was everything but romance between them, so with the pressure they were under, it must’ve come naturally to add love to their lives. I hope they’re as happy together as his father was with me, and for a longer time than I had. Being in Victors Village instead of the mines, the odds would be ever in their favor.”

 

Farmers

 

Surprisingly, Eleven seemed relatively resigned to their usual arena fate even when they stood a relatively high chance of it being different. They had cruelly learned to not get their hopes up.

 

An old lady spoke up. “I’ve seen more than enough death in my long life, seventy years this September. My son a bit over seventeen years ago, after his wife exactly a year before that. I done raised up their babies, and it’s one of them that y’all are here to talk to me about. Maybe that grandson of mine is about to join them in the earth. Yet if Thresh’s death means two others come back instead of one other, I’ll understand. If not my boy, then mister and missus Hawthorne.”

 

“Hell, Thresh has a younger sister too, though by a few minutes instead of several years. But Katniss and Gale also know what it’s like to have they fathers gone, and what it’s like out here in those districts,” Thresh’s also-hulking sister Raspberry added.

 

“Course I wanna see my baby later this month,” Rue’s mother said. “They still haven’t caught her yet, after all,” she added with a wry grin. “But if I see Katniss and her man in six months, that wouldn’t be so bad.”

 

Back To The Games

 

            Those words of Willow Clayton’s were the last interview snippets broadcast before our nation’s collective attention was brought back to the arena. Well, if this all wasn’t a cue for the Career Alliance to disintegrate, I don’t know what was. I was right.

            Clove was physically close to Cato and threw a knife at him, but he of all people would have known that was coming. He ducked to get out of the initial blow with just a scraped shoulder. He picked up that same knife because it was closer than his own sword. And so Clove’s throat was slit with her own blade. Cato had made it quick, and laid out her body for the mortician’s hovercraft, so different from how they had thrown down the corpses they had created earlier. It seemed he still cared for her, but with a heavy heart abandoned her for the sake of his girlfriend and their child.

            Marvel attempted to stab Glimmer. He had the decency to not go for the belly, or at least lacked the deviousness to think favorably of such a thing. With the popularity of the young lovers and the announcement for them, any other victor would have had a particularly hard time of it, especially if they had killed in such a way. Glimmer grabbed his wrist; while Marvel easily snatched his arm away, he dropped the dagger in the process. He snatched some supplies and ran.

            Cato chased him through the woods, so of course ranged weapons were in order, and for both of them that meant javelins. A few landed amongst the trees, but while Marvel was setting his feet for another throw, Cato got him. That was always a risk in such a duel.

 

            Parts of the Final Eight interviews, well the Final Six that we still had, would be broadcast throughout the rest of the Games. It looked like there would be no combat for awhile. The two couples were in their own camps, while Rue and Thresh were both off by their lonesome. We hadn’t seen much of those two – Rue running through the trees and Thresh hiding out in a field wouldn’t be that interesting except to the District Eleven feed.

 

            It was oh so obvious that Glimmer and Cato were having sex in their tent most of the evening. Some of the audience took prurient interest in that. I found the voyeurism repellent, especially with Finn so hurt by being forced into doing such things, but Glimmer and Cato apparently had different tastes. I still thought it was an improvement over yet more violence. It was no wonder she got pregnant so quickly – they were so lustful they were willing to risk fucking while in the arena. It would be especially easy to be caught in a compromising position when making love while in the midst of people trying to kill one another.

           

            The branches of a certain tree could hold a 66 pound girl, but not a 185 pound boy, and Cato began educating the country on the subject of District Two profanity. The Career couple went off to find some of their other opponents. Katniss and Gale found Rue in the same tree. It was really cute how she leapt down, suggested her own name for a daughter they were not actually having, and how her allies shared dinner with her. The tender moments with her, not to mention between the lovers throughout the Games, were so different from the usual cruelty of an arena. The Capitol hoped they could contain it to just a different form of entertainment; those were not the hopes in the minds of me and many others.

Rue had been paying close attention while in hiding, letting Katniss and Gale know about the traps around Glimmer and Cato’s supplies. This concept immediately caught Gale’s interest; even I could tell as much.

 

            Katniss and Gale found Glimmer and Cato away from that supply pile the next morning. We the audience found those two displaying their exhibitionist streak yet again by going skinny-dipping in the arena lake. I was one of the very few girls who regularly saw something favorably comparable to those glimpses of Cato’s body. The two couples narrowly avoided contact back at the Cornucopia afterwards. Gale had found a club which hadn’t been transferred to the supply pile, post-bloodbath sloppiness which could cost the Careers dearly.

 

            Glimmer and Cato found Katniss and Gale’s camp, also secured although less explosively. That slowed the Careers down before Cato got into a fight with Gale that left both of the boys moderately wounded. Gale set off the mines with dummy objects, and with both camps wrecked, the couples went even further into hiding.

 

Katniss and Gale had more sense than Glimmer and Cato with the public displays of affection or lack thereof, but the pair from Twelve gave into some salaciousness as they replaced their missing sleeping bag with each other’s bodies. “Apparently the girl on fire is plenty warm enough,” Claudius quipped.

 

            The audience felt a sense of foreboding the tenth night as Glimmer and Cato approached Thresh’s hiding place for an ambush the eleventh morning. Two people with the element of surprise against one? The audience had already gotten its Cato-Gale fight and now it got one between Cato and the other big guy. And then there were five, with only Rue standing between the Gamemakers’ dream ending of a showdown between the two couples.

 

            Glimmer and Cato would strike even earlier in the day on the thirteenth morning, going after Rue as dawn was breaking. Katniss and Gale were nearby, so whether or not Rue could be caught, there would be another showdown between the couples. Whether they would all walk away from another fight we didn’t know. People didn’t have to be awakened for Games events, however major, but a lot of people throughout Panem would want to be roused for this.

 

            Glimmer must’ve taken Clove’s knives – a tribute’s tools were fair game. That reminded me that a tribute token, including Clove’s bracelet, stayed with the corpse. The unwritten rule was partially an island of sanity, an act of respect or avoiding an act of degradation depending on how one wanted to look at it. Also, the tokens weren’t supposed to have practical value anyway.

 

Glimmer was the one to catch the little flower. Rue had said “if they can’t catch me, they can’t kill me”, which didn’t technically say anything about what would happen if she was caught. The worst (for her) was implied, and a whole nation waited to see if that would actually happen.

Fortunately for Rue, Glimmer was certainly no Clove with Clove’s weapons. I’m sure the official trainer sin the Capitol and the unofficial trainers in District Two were suffering professional embarrassment, but with someone’s life on the line, did the feel any more than that?

Unfortunately for Rue, the odds caught up with her via the sheer quantity of Clove’s armament that Glimmer sent through the air.

 

Katniss was of course distraught, and it seemed like we were getting a demonstration of District Twelve funeral ritual to go with the example of their district’s marriage rites from earlier in the Games. _Dispatched and matched_ , I rhymed. The funeral involved a sort of three-fingered goodbye wave.

Relatives of victors, if they had any left, sometimes joined the central Victory Isle viewing session. “Smart man,” my dad observed, also having noticed that Gale was clearly going along with what his wife wanted.

Gale held the bow to help make sure they would be performing such a ritual rather than being the subjects of one. He was not a bad shot, although most people would seem like one compared to that wife of his.

The Gamemakers treated tributes as just parts of their show, and Katniss was clearly treating Rue very much otherwise. The girl named after a flower got covered in flowers, although I was not enough of a botanist to know if her namesake was amongst them.

 

Katniss couldn’t have known what Cato had done for Clove after doing her in. Nevertheless, one couple had outdone the other yet again. Glimmer and Cato had been lying in wait during Rue’s funeral and now the showmanship would quite literally become deadly serious. Who’d ride the crest of the waves of hope and who would drown underneath them?


	13. Voyage Of A Lifetime

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was originally going to call this chapter Flood Of Hope, but renamed Chapter 12 with that when I thought of a new title for this. I also expanded Hazelle Hawthorne’s interview.

With one of their victims being memorialized, it was an awfully convenient time for the Gamemakers to be having technical difficulties. Usually the finale of a Games is what they wanted to be particularly sure to broadcast, but things kept being different this time around.

           

Glimmer was the first of the Career couple to emerge into the clearing that held Katniss and Gale. She might well die the way she had killed Rue – Katniss held one of the knives that may well have come from Rue’s corpse or the ground near it.

 

Gale had a shot lined up on Glimmer, but could he make it before Cato had anything to say about it? An instant in the bloodbath meant Cato was still here to do so. Katniss had killed Pearl instead after being momentarily distracted by Gale interrupting Glimmer’s charge. However, there were no other tributes to target now.

 

Cato’s fury now was unrivaled even by his brutal barehanded kill in the bloodbath. His feet slammed against the ground with such force that the thudding seemed to reverberate. He was pumping his arms so rapidly that his sword was scraping the dirt and grasses. Then for some reason he slammed the blade right into that ground, screaming “I can’t do this anymore!”

 

Perhaps he was hoping to create a diversion for Glimmer beyond a usual attack. Even if he didn’t survive the maneuver, his girlfriend and their child might. Both logically and emotionally, he’d want that instead of the other couple winning. Glimmer and the baby were hardly the only people he’d live on for.

 

Yet he had even bigger plans than such a loving sacrifice – this is, assuming he had any plans at all as his physical rage became verbal. I didn’t know what was going on, and neither did Katniss and Gale. “What’s your game, Two?” Gale called out. _I appreciated when people were that direct._

“I finally love someone and I’m not gonna watch her die! Where’s the honor, glory and pride in this? Fuck it!” Cato answered, with more raw fury. _Cato’s answer was similarly clear. Not only that, he was using the words of Career propaganda to say he’d had enough of it._ I foresaw that the Games broadcast equipment would have more ‘unforeseen technical difficulties’, and as the screen went black, I was hardly the only one stunned by what had already been said.

“About time a tribute announced what it’s like in an arena,” Mags observed.

 

The utterly unique tribute situation had threatened the institution of the Games themselves, and since that was the most visible example of the Capitol’s power, it threatened Snow and his ilk themselves. They must’ve known it and hoped to douse the flames with the rule change. That wasn’t the hope most of us were feeling, and those four fiery personalities refused to burn out.

 

            The broadcast conveniently went live again as the Gamemakers unleashed several creatures that looked somewhat like wolves. Muttations. Such a twisted application of technology was a definite signature of the Capitol. They must’ve wanted those horrifying things to kill tributes after the tributes refused to do that themselves. They also wanted viewers to ooh and ahh over their latest killing machines, but my part of the audience didn’t, having been so exposed to some of their previous mechanisms of slaughter.

            Perhaps they wanted the tributes to, well, throw each other to the wolves. However, all four seemed to have the idea to fight them off together. “Glim, get your machete!” Cato shouted as he went to get his sword back out of the ground.

“So you have a pet name for your new girl?” Katniss shot back.

“Lustre thought of it first. Yeah, Everdeen, she has a younger sister too, you know,” Cato parried in an equally harsh tone of voice.

“So did Rue and Thresh, and so does Gale,” Katniss pointed out. _The Capitol was probably glad to broadcast this competition between districts_. ‘Technical difficulties’ at such a pivotal moment could only go so far – in general, the Capitol wanted to keep its deniability somewhat plausible.

“So did Clove too,” Cato pointed out. “Flavia Hawkins, I wish we hadn’t thought that was necessary.” _Well, after his previous stunt, he must’ve figured he may as well keep going._

 

I wondered what the tributes were talking about as the screens on them went black. When the images returned, we saw Gale glancing at Cato’s arsenal. “Are you compensating for something?”

Cato mumbled something angry about that. Glimmer also answered, but rather more loudly. “Oh no, no problems there!” _Well, she would know._ The Capitol had no problem with broadcasting salaciousness. Finnick and I would’ve learned that the hard way, but at least this was between two people who genuinely loved each other.

            Gale found himself having done something awkward and wanting to move on. I couldn’t blame him, having been there done that myself. “Okay, nevermind that. Let’s get back to business. Let’s get on the horn.”

 

That was an amusing way to suggest that they regroup at the Cornucopia, but however he said it, they all did it. Katniss wouldn’t try to shoot while running, but Glimmer and Cato, both armed with handheld blades, desperately hacked at the creatures. Gale had a similar approach with the club he had scrounged from the Cornucopia and later fought Cato with. That bought the group some time by stunning some of the creatures.

 

As they closed in on the Cornucopia, one of the creatures closed in on Gale before Glimmer cut it down. _I heard loud and clear Glimmer recognizing that Gale wasn’t her real enemy – she hadn’t left her supposed enemy to the beast. I wondered if the real enemies in the Capitol noticed that._

 

Katniss was first to the Cornucopia, and the group of tributes with mutts closing in desperately needed her arrows. Twelve days ago, although it seemed like it had been much more time than that, Katniss had won a race to the Cornucopia to get that bow.

 

The four tributes demonstrated incredible coordination in getting all of their number to the top of the Cornucopia in relative safety and facing the horde beneath them.

 

It was Gale’s turn to rant. “The mutts are imitating the dead tributes!” he started before the screens went dark again. _Maybe that would explain the variations in the creatures’ appearance._

 

When Cato started running his mouth, Lotus ran back to her Victors Village house. She came running back and whispered frantically to me. “You and your family have to hide, and I know where. Who knows what the Capitol’s going to do to troublesome victors now of all times?”

We grabbed what we could as quickly as we could. My box of valuables included mainly my coins and Olive’s old ring. My pile of similar metal discs was topped by a singular piece of pearl set in platinum.

Finnick had obviously gotten the same warning from Lotus. One of the few things he had grabbed was his ring from Popeye. It had a band of the same metal, but with no stone and with different patterns in the etching.

Our parents stood behind us with Mags, Lotus and Hook in front of us. “So where are we going?” I blurted out. For once my anxiety over uncertainly would be quite well understood, I hoped.

 

“District Thirteen didn’t actually get destroyed in the first rebellion,” Lotus said gravely. “They’ve been planning a second, and Glimmer, Cato, Katniss and Gale started it for them.”

“They probably needed a lot of time to rebuild, but this much?” I answered.

“That does take time, and it also takes time to put the right people at the right places throughout the Districts and in the Capitol,” Lotus explained. “Some of them will be picking us up in a hovercraft any time now.”

We crossed the bridge out of Victory Isle to wait in a field between the victors’ mansions and the rest of District Four.

 

            When that hovercraft landed, it was clear the District Two victor Lyme was in charge of this operation. She definitely acted like a person of authority, the Capitol made it all too clear what such behavior looked like, but I suppose it helped to be similarly organized in order to fight back against them. She helped us race into the hold.

            Victors were instantly recognizable visages to almost anyone in the country, let alone of their own. Emerald of District One was the only other one with Lyme. However, they had Cato’s mother and Glimmer’s family with them.

 

            As it took off again and the invisibility shield went up, I asked “We getting the District Twelve families next?” in a tone of voice that I think indicated I had already figured it out.

            “Exactly,” Lyme answered crisply.

 

            We didn’t know what had happened to those four kids who had taken a rebel stand in the arena – to communicate about that meant signals the Capitol could track, and it would disturb their parents even more than those folks already were. “They went and did it now,” Glimmer’s father and Cato’s mother seemed to be in agreement on.

 

As we prepared to land in District Twelve, I noticed what must be the Everdeen and Hawthorne families on the other side of their district’s border fence. What was going on today was definitely our chance to escape the Capitol, that’s for sure.

 

Primrose and Rory looked even more precious in person. However, Victor the youngest Hawthorne boy and Posy their only girl drew the most attention in the flight to District Thirteen. Lyme passed out plain chocolate bars to all her passengers. The rich taste sat well with me, although it wasn’t a particularly sweet variety. Victor and Posy took to the stuff like, well, the starving kids they were. Their mother Hazelle understood, refraining from chastising them over the mess on the floor and on their faces.

 

Lyme figured something was wrong with the other mother, and simply said. “Mrs. Everdeen?”

            “My friend Maysilee used to work at her family’s sweet shop,” the haggard woman answered plainly.

            “Maysilee Donner. Fallen in the 50th Games,” Lyme said for the benefit of people like me not particularly aware of that bit of Games history. People often didn’t pay much attention to another district’s dead tributes; Rue had been a glaring exception. Come to think of it, that had been Haymitch Abernathy’s year, and the country heard particularly little about his Games.

            Katniss’ mother agreed that she meant that Maysilee, adding “Her sister Melody was never the same either, even after she married the man who was to become District Twelve mayor.”

Lyme realized something else. “What Katniss did for Rue at the end reminded me of Haymitch with Maysilee twenty-four years earlier.” Katniss’ mother emitted a new wave of tears and even I realized that maybe Lyme shouldn’t have said that.

 

We landed in absolute chaos in a District Thirteen hangar, but even I had expected the unexpected the way this year’s Games were going. Cecelia’s husband and their three girls had come in on another flight; I suppose they could have risked only so many stops on our flight. The people fleeing from the Capitol and the arena were still on their way, but they were safe as far as we knew. As safe as they could be after such public defiance.


	14. Sunrise And Sunset

            I didn’t hear exactly what the tributes were saying to their families, but you didn’t need to hear the words to capture the joy of the moment.

           

            Primrose held up a sign that read ‘The saved welcome home their saviors’. Those words were in what looked like a boy’s handwriting, and judging by the circumstances, that boy was probably Rory. Apparently, Primrose and Rory being together was such a recent development it was news even to their big-sibling District Twelve tributes.

 

After the tributes saw their families again, a touching private moment, the group of four would have a grand entrance with the public of District Thirteen. Primrose rode on Gale’s shoulders, imitated by Rory and Posy and Cato and Lustre.

Apparently in this district Glimmer was the most popular of the four tributes and Posy the favorite of the tributes’ relatives.

There weren’t many small children or pregnant women in the crowd, so the presence of youth in general must’ve been rather uplifting, let alone these particular youths.

 

Another woman who exuded authority spoke to the crowd. She must be the one in charge here. President Alma Coin, I was soon told. “Welcome to District Thirteen, and welcome to the beginning of the end of the Capitol’s rule,” she said.  
            “Why did you abandon the other twelve districts to Snow and his ilk?” Gale blurted out, a question similar to what I had asked Lyme.

She apparently wasn’t used to that kind of attitude and snapped back with “We barely escaped with our own lives, let alone strength to escalate the fight. It takes a long time to set up these plans, boy.” She wasn’t perfect, but I don’t see how anyone could be as bad as Snow, and working with her was our best chance to deal with Snow once and for all.

 

The whole country was about to get another dose of Gale being angry, a mental wake-up call the country needed like the way a physically drowsy person craved caffeine. I wasn’t surprised that Beetee the victor, a genius even by District Three standards, could break into the Capitol communications network.

“I understand that many of you were overjoyed at the announcement. The Capitol wasn’t just going to let one couple win, they were still going to make one die. Killing 22 instead of 23 is not my idea of mercy! I had never believed the Capitol propaganda, but at least Cato Adams finally saw through it.”

“I sometimes wasn’t sure if _I’d_ make it out alive,” he said, showing some of his physical wounds to the cameras. “So I was surprised to escape with Katniss and doubly surprised to escape with Cato and Glimmer as well. You think other districts are the enemy, as the Games are designed to do, but the Capitol is the real enemy.”

 

The District Thirteen fortress had included some of Panem’s nuclear weapons; they had used their part of the stockpile to get the Capitol to pretend to leave them alone, and vice versa.

 

There was an orderly routine here that I could really get used to as I learned what it was. Each morning we had a schedule which they made clear for us with a temporary tattoo. It made sense how bathing was scheduled for the evenings to wash it off. That made sense anyway. It was one less thing to do while rushing in the mornings, and you could wash off the mess you got on you during the day and go to bed clean.

Finnick and I were in a meeting room with District Thirteen officials, having made it there after breakfast but before this year’s four stars. As one of the Gamemakers, Plutarch Heavensbee had been the highest-ranking rebel plant in the Capitol. He had been invaluable in using his position to secure our escape, and he probably had all sorts of inside information to use later in this rebellion.

Once Glimmer, Cato, Katniss and Gale arrived, Plutarch introduced us to them with “Meet the other two-victor couple”.

Glimmer cheerfully spoke up first with “Lucky Annie!” _Someone gets it. I’m liking her more and more._

Gale angrily countered “Some couple – Finnick’s bedded practically every woman in the Capitol”. He was many who had believed the public image of my Finn.

I had to defend the Finn I knew. “They have Finnick only in name – no true touch, glance or desire. Oh, so you were unaware of Snow’s secret side business? The bastard pimps out attractive victors and threatens their loved ones to ensure compliance. I’m Finnick’s true love, but that’s not good enough for Snow!” This outburst and my stare off into the distance was typical for who I was both before and after the damage of the arena.

“I feel so sorry for him. After all, I chose dear Catnip over vapid pretty girls. Finnick wasn’t allowed to make that choice until now.” He caught himself and added “All of these ladies are both very attractive and very intelligent.” _Gale gets it too, excellent._ ‘Catnip’ must be his cute nickname for her, a mispronunciation of ‘Katniss’.

 

Cato had once believed many of the Capitol’s falsehoods, including the lies about Finnick. “I had thought that was one of the best things to look forward to about being a Victor, rather than one of the worst to fear,” he confided to the two of us. “Even before that news, I had only just learned how happy I could be with the same woman.”

 

Finnick and I wouldn’t exactly have a joint wedding with one of this year’s couples – we’d be sharing the date with all four of them. Katniss and Gale wanted to get married officially. Cato had realized how much sense it made for all concerned for him to make a wife out of Glimmer.

 

I wouldn’t have minded just signing the marriage certificate and being done with it; Katniss felt the same way. However, finally getting to have him, we didn’t care at all if it was big and fancy instead. On the other hand, Glimmer was going for the big fancy wedding she had always wanted. Coin and Heavensbee were also arguing about how fancy it would be, Coin being used to the simple life of her district, Heavensbee accustomed to the anything but plain lifestyle of the Capitol. Both of them wanted to stick to their routine, and I understood that.

Heavensbee eventually won the argument with his boss by saying “Charge it to the propaganda budget”. That made it clear that our special day would have a meaning beyond the six of us and our families. Publicizing the ceremony would help the rebellion, so we all understood. The country would see how happy we were outside of the Capitol’s control, which would help inspire them to lose their own chains. The audience reaction to this year’s last four is what had changed things. Finnick had gotten even more popular ever since his victory. Even I must have a fan or two, and I’d have more through Finnick. Would people be hurt by what had happened to my Finn or simply take it as an interesting curiosity detached from the real lives of the people involved?

Katniss still wanted to keep things simple. “Weddings are so much simpler in Twelve; we already had that in the arena and I wouldn’t mind continuing in that direction.”

“True enough, my Catnip, but I hate the Capitol almost as much as I love you,” Gale said to agree with both his wife (wife-to-be?) and the rebel mastermind.

 

            What date would we be sharing, though? “How about August 26th?” Heavensbee suggested.

            “That’s Lustre’s birthday – I want to keep that her big day, not mine,” Glimmer disagreed. _That was so sweet of her._ That reminded me of something from Gale’s welcome home conversation – one of his siblings had recently had a birthday. _Missing that must’ve been one of the Capitol’s minor indignities amidst all the major ones._

 

            Finnick and I already having rings was fortunate since Coin didn’t want to budget much for those either. Cato was annoyed about this, probably for the sake of his bride wanting things as fancy as possible. “You want some gold? I got some gold right here! Make the rings out of this if you have to!” he said, slamming down an actual coin in front of President Coin.

This piqued my obsessive interest, and I looked at the monetary object itself – a 56 ADD District Two aureus, a token very much like his father’s. While I was intrigued by this, Gale got annoyed by the casual display of wealth. I wouldn’t have thought of that, but it made sense now that he mentioned it. And he sure had a way of mentioning things! “One of those things could feed my family for nearly a month!”

“Our rings made out of my token for the Games where we met,” Cato said to explain what I had already figured out from studying a peculiar aspect of Games history. Considering all the things exciting to me and boring to everyone else, some of them were bound to come up in conversation sometimes.

            Glimmer was clearly having fun with her ideas. “How about engraving the date, the person’s name, and that of their spouse? My father’s a metalworker in the jewelry shops back home. He can surely take care of it. Lustre is a promising young artist; I’m sure she can come up with some nice lettering.” Nobody disliked this plan enough to suggest something else.

 

The rebel agents from the Capitol knew how to make a show out of things, and at least they were using their powers for good. Katniss’ stylist Cinna was one of them. We had all seen his brilliance since the entrance parade, and I was quite happy to visualize myself in a wedding gown of his. The three grooms would be wearing the fancier version of the District Thirteen uniform as a sign of the war that was now brewing.

Katniss would soon be joining them in those muted colors instead of the vivid ones Cinna came up with. I was no soldier, being one of those victors to out-survive rather than out-fight the other tributes. Glimmer was a fighter, but not a soldier, if her shooting ability or lack thereof was any indication. There was also the issue of what Cato had shot into her. That baby-to-be had partially sparked this rebellion, and if Glimmer lost it, that spark could be partially extinguished.

 

I still could barely believe that Finnick and I were about to fulfill our years-long hope of marrying each other. How many more dreams of how many other residents of Panem were yet to realized this year?

 

The ceremony could combine the wedding rituals of all four of our districts. Mags had brought plenty of saltwater for the newlyweds to paint each others’ lips with. Katniss and Gale would be glad to teach us that thing with the bread.

Lyme’s affinity for chocolate went far beyond a stash in her emergency evacuation gear. She cared nothing for cooking, but still had some ideas for those who did, and so our wedding cakes would be rather chocolaty.

 

Everyone ate well here, but pretty much the same as each other except for variations due to medical reasons. It was also pretty much the same each day. That said a lot about life here. I suppose even I could get tired of the familiarity.

District Thirteen was safe rather than in danger from the Capitol, but its people were nevertheless uplifted by this year’s wave of fresh air, and would be especially glad to celebrate along with us.

 

Katniss and Gale said they’d regularly gone hunting in the woods outside District Twelve. From this I realized several things. No wonder their relatives had thought of going there to wait for us. Since they were used to doing dangerous for the sake of their families, it must’ve come naturally to do so on Reaping Day. District Thirteen had a similar-looking forest, and they probably wanted as much of a reminder of home as they could get.

Coin let them out, though she came up with as many rules as usual. Rory and Cato could go with them, and the four of them came back with a herd of big critters. Apparently they had a big taste, as I learned at dinner that evening. The stew went down fine, but I coughed up the plain piece as subtly as I could.

 

Lotus and Hook would be our ringbearers, and would explain the story of those heirloom pieces. They eventually decided to duet on it. We figured Glimmer’s father and sister were the ones to practice it in front of.

“Several past victors married,” _Including Cecelia who was around here somewhere_ “but there was only one two-victor couple before these three pairs – Olive and Popeye from our district fifty years ago. They are no longer with us, but they knew about Annie and Finnick, and willed their rings to them for when this moment could finally come.”

Then the Shinesmith jewelers took a close look at the pieces themselves. Lustre was particularly interested in the etching, simple geometric patterns, but analogous to the lettering she had contributed to the four new rings. Sunstone admired platinum itself. “Harder than iron, but much prettier and easier to work.” Then he switched to the story. “My profession may well hinge on creating sentimental value; it seems you captured some which already existed.”

It would be a highlight of his career to make the rings for his first daughter and her husband. It was a heck of a way for his second daughter to begin her artistic and working life.

 

I went to the medical bay after that. Katniss was also there, and one of the techs got her a small bottle off a small shelf. “You might just want this,” the medic announced.

“What is it?” Catnip asked.

            “Birth control shot. Your mother might mix up something from the woods, and that’s better than nothing, but this is the good stuff, kind of like morphling instead of snowcoat as a painkiller. There’s a certain someone who used this stuff regularly, stopped, and is pregnant now.”

“Glimmer? Well, those shots must be effective if they kept that whore from getting knocked up until now,” Katniss joked. _She had said she hadn’t even kissed a boy until Gale, so Glimmer’s promiscuity must’ve seemed especially odd to her._ She gladly took the needle in her upper arm, the pinprick oh so much less than many other things she had to deal with. I just as enthusiastically turned one down.

 

My dress was the color of the sea. The sleeve lace included my district number. All in all, the thing was beautiful. I couldn’t wait for Lotus to put it on me ... _or for Finnick to take it off of me_ , I thought deviously. I would’ve casually slipped a hand beneath my waistband if I wasn’t in public. Glimmer nearly did something similar anyway.

 

As the big day started, I overheard Cato chatting with Gale, specifically that Cato’s and Katniss’ birthdays were both May 8th.

“Would make for a kickass birthday party,” Cato suggested.

“If we live to see it,” Gale gravely granted.

Finnick was right behind us and cheerfully countered “Well, I’m December 3rd and Annie is November 11th. Sorry if that spoils the fun”.

 

As I came out of the dressing room with Lotus, we looked at the people we were sharing this day with. Finnick was wearing his uniform with a trident, Cato with his sword and Gale with a knife. The other brides’ gowns had essentially the same design as mine, but with Katniss in forest green and Glimmer in the District One colors of purple and pink. Primrose was in a plain white buttoned blouse and Rory in a similar boy’s shirt. That was probably what passed for fancy clothes by District Twelve standards, and even that was less plain than the typical District Thirteen apparel. We all looked beautiful, not so much because of what we looked like, but what we were here to do.

 

Cato’s mother Teresa was there to give us the signal to enter the auditorium. She had a final bit of advice for her son. “Remember that you’re still alive because a man listened when his woman told him to do something”. Katniss and Gale both applauded this reminder of Katniss’ order for Gale not to fire on Cato.

            “Yes, mother, giving me instructions is Glimmer’s job now, and I rather like what she tells me to do,” Cato answered sarcastically. Glimmer winked, recognizing the dirty joke in that. Glimmer’s instructions must be more like ‘eat my pussy’ instead of ‘eat your vegetables’.

 

Teresa went ahead of us to announce “They’re almost ready”.

Beetee was in charge of broadcasting this too, and said simply “We just went live”.

Finnick and I got to lead, front and center. The other couples respected that we had had to wait the longest. They were behind us, Katniss and Gale to the left and Glimmer and Cato to the right. I still had my father to walk with me, and so did Glimmer, but Katniss didn’t, so her mother stood with those two men.

“We all know how excited she is to be with you. Live up to it,” Sunstone Shinesmith told his very-soon-to-be son-in-law.

 

Katniss’ mother spoke publically, though. “We are lucky to be at a wedding instead of at funerals. I haven’t seen men look at their women like that since my Jacob. May you all have many decades of feeling like that. Gale, welcome to the family _officially_.”

 

As we started walking, Haymitch started waving. The country saw him somewhat resembling sober, but he was nevertheless with his drinking buddies Jack of Five and Chaff of Eleven. To the country they shared good times, but we victors knew they shared sorrows. We had some good times to share with them today though.

 _Mags – it was a happy relief for her to see this, let alone us!_ Cashmere was in the audience, jubilant over the crowning accomplishment with a favorite tribute. Brutus was behind us with his elite mentoree Cato. He was more reserved. I sometimes thought I was too logical to be emotional, whereas he found himself too tough, but I still understood. I recognized several other victors sitting in the crowd. _Lyme, Wiress, Emerald, Cecelia, Gloss and Johanna, oh my!_

 

Gale made another one of his loud pointed announcements. “Three of the attendants are our fellow victors. The other three are victors in a way, since they’ll never face the reaping again.”

 

Lotus and Hook unclenched their fists to show off the rings and begin to tell the story about them. I took Olive’s ring from Lotus and slipped it on, and Finnick followed with transferring Popeye’s band from Hook’s hand to his own. Everybody cheered, but none more loudly than Cecelia, not even her husband and their three daughters. Lustre showed off her handiwork to the cameras right before her sister put it on. Cato also took his own, but Primrose and Rory ringed their older siblings in unison.

 

Each district’s traditional vows would be combined, except for the practical and unromantic words of Two. “Gentlemen, will you be the husbands these lovely ladies deserve?” said Sunstone Shinesmith. Three ‘we will’s, but my Finn’s may as well have been the only one to my ears.

It was the brides’ turn to belt out those magic words when Teresa Anthony prompted “Ladies, will you be the wives these gallant gentlemen deserve?”

“Will you serve faithfully as the captains of each others’ hearts?” my father Theon Cresta and Finn’s mother Lily Odair said for all six of us to answer. I did, but my tears started and weren’t about to stop.

Ingrid Everdeen and Hazelle Hawthorne finished with “Will you honor and cherish the ones you’ve chosen, throughout all the highs and lows this life presents you with?”

 

We all rushed to sign the paperwork Coin thrust in front of us. Finnick and I got to do that first too. Mentors were often the legal witnesses for married victors, since relatives couldn’t do it, and it was Mags and Hook that made us official. The pen dropped from my hand as the gaze shifted from the paper to Finnick. I almost couldn’t believe it had really happened. Kissing Finnick for the first time as my husband, I looked out of the corner of my eye. Primrose and Rory’s lips were definitely touching. Glimmer and Cato’s tongues were definitely touching.

My home district’s traditions were particularly prominent at the end. Previously married couples, our parents included, joined us at the front of the hall. The not-so-newly weds led off the District Four wedding song. _Captain of My Heart_ compared the union to a long sea voyage. Katniss almost involuntarily picked up the chorus, as people listening to a song are likely to do. I had no idea until now that she could sing so beautifully. When the song ended, all six of our mothers handed us small vials of water. Finnick and I brushed it onto each others’ lips and the other four followed. Glimmer ran her mouth before Cato did something else with it. “That saltwater stings, but nothing assaults my lips quite like your kisses”, she said loudly, and Cato gladly gave her another demonstration. Well, they were as happy as Finn and I were, they just expressed it differently.

 

Now all six of us would make little speeches in an orderly manner, ladies and lower districts first as usual.

 

Glimmer practically squealed, “I first thought I simply had my latest piece of eye candy. I’m so glad I was wrong! Now we’re going to be a family! I hadn’t thought about our future because I didn’t think we had one. Cashmere, Brutus, Haymitch, what a brilliant idea!” They all drew tremendous applause. Brutus remained standing and Cashmere and Haymitch rose from the victors section.

 

Cato didn’t yell, though, at least not by his standards. “This woman was the first to crack my shell. One of my fellow District Two tough guys is here with us today, and he of all people would understand how difficult that is”. Cato paused for his specific recognition to be acknowledged. “That reaping footage was of the prettiest young woman I’ve ever seen. When we met, embraced and kissed, it couldn’t have felt more natural. I see it in her eyes. It’s over - I’m a goner. I never knew about sweet love, and never had one like her before; now it’s two as one. This won’t be a walk in the park, but I can’t be afraid of the dark. I shall always cherish the attentions of one so beautiful. Love of my life, I’m pledged to you – I’ll honor and stay forever true to you, my Glimmer Rose.” _He must’ve gotten tired of saying dirty things in front of her parents, though if Lustre was indeed like Glimmer, she would be just as happy about the salaciousness._

 

I was almost catatonic with joy as I got out “I’m so glad this day finally came! Finnick saved me – before either of us faced the arena, while I was in the arena, and afterwards. He cares for and understands me like no one else. Look at what he turned down because he’d rather have me. That’s for real.”

 

Finnick relished finally telling more of our story to the public of Panem. “I’ll never forget when I first met her – can you believe that someone from District Four didn’t know how to swim? I first felt the magic as I began to teach her that and she began to teach me how to move past the horrors of my arena. I will never forgive Snow for torturing us because I balked at his vile business. I just know he rigged the 70th Reaping and turned this lovely girl into ‘crazy Cresta’. But at least I had taught my beautiful little fishy how to swim back to me,” he said beautifully.

 

Katniss also got personal. I of all people understood that could be difficult. “I had never thought about love until a few weeks ago, but it felt so natural with a friend so close. Then he wanted us to be married even for what little time we thought we had left together. That’s when I realized for sure he was the one forever. We were on a battlefield and he still took the time to kiss me good morning – ain’t that somethin’? Now I get why so many girls are such romantics. Also, as usual, Cinna’s handiwork was brilliant. May there be a reason for this dress to be used again - I do hope Prim and Rory’s relationship grows up with them. It seems it didn’t take her as long to find what I’ve found.” They were still holding hands and turned to face each other to kiss on the lips again. Katniss was as happy for Primrose’s minor celebration as Primrose was for Katniss’ major one.

 

Gale was short and sweet, which I appreciated. As wonderful as this was for us, I did want to get to the reception by now. “May ‘the rest of our lives’ truly mean something. The Announcement was the happiest moment of my life – so far. I only wish it didn’t take the arena to make us realize how great we are for each other.”

We pushed through the thick crowd on our way to the dining hall. “Mrs. Hawthorne?” Chaff said to Katniss, while looking quite full of himself. Since she hadn’t changed her name, the District Eleven drunk found it funny to address her as if she did.

“Nope, still Ms. Everdeen,” Katniss countered.

He stopped joking around because he had something important to say. “ _Anyway_ , most everybody from District Eleven was extremely touched by your love for our little flower. More importantly, it touched _off_ a major riot in Zone B. The bouquet seen ‘round the country. That milestone in the rebellion was just before Cato ran his mouth.”

 

One of the cakes was a blue fish for Finn and the beautiful fishy who was now his wife. Glimmer and Cato had a gray cube, and Katniss and Gale’s cake was a green tree. Lustre had done the decoration in the same font as her lettering on the other four rings, just much larger and much tastier. The District Twelve cake had drawings of all the Everdeens and Hawthornes.

Glimmer was handed her machete. It looked really clean, and it had to be, since someone had needed to clean blood off of it. Using is as a tool to help celebrate these happiest of times would go a long way towards mentally cleansing it. She wrapped her hands around the handle and Cato put his on top of hers. They pushed down into the cake; soft sepia sponge and silver sugar sunk to meet the blade. “It’s my wedding so I’ll have dessert first if I damn well please,” Cato joked at his mother. _And eat something besides vegetables_ , I was reminded.

Finn fed me and I fed him. When the ringbearers followed, Rory observed that it tasted like Lyme’s candy. At this point Posy and Victor started the public stampede.

 

Dinner was more of the meat stew probably because the hunters had left them with more than enough material for it.

 

“We’ll show the footage and discuss the reactions later,” Plutarch announced. Finnick lifted me up while Cato began carrying Glimmer and Katniss continued to walk alongside Gale. We headed towards our new married compartments, in a hallway next to each other. We wanted to finally be left alone, but we’d take some pictures for the media crew to work with. I suppose the pictures would go well with the footage of Katniss and Gale in the arena, because now we were all going to do that thing with the bread.

“It’s important to the tradition that the couple makes the fire themselves,” Gale recited as he held his knife. Katniss did just that while Gale cut the bread. After she was done, she passed the fire stuff to Glimmer, and I got it from the new Mrs. Adams after she was done with it. The grooms lit the fires as Gale continued to recite, saying “May we always burn passionately for each other”. We started crunching on the crispy bread as Gale finished with “And now six have become three”. I guess it usually went ‘And now two have become one’. I could tell it was as important to them as the water and such was to us. I knew that from how the Games had went, but I didn’t really know it until doing it myself.

 

I liked when things went according to plan. I loved when the public declaration of my love went as intended. Now we weren’t even public to our fellow couples, as Finnick carried me into the room.

 

            The uniform, being so practical, easily came off Finnick. My gown was a different story. We wouldn’t dare tear something of such importance to us, a symbol of something that was years too long in coming. Fortunately, Finnick took helping me undress as an excuse to massage me all over and press his body up against mine.

 

The time had finally come for the union of our flesh years after that of our minds. So Finnick in only his underclothes with a growing bulge underneath wasn’t distracting – it was exactly what we were supposed to be focusing on. “You’re magical – you can make my penis get bigger by making your clothes disappear,” he joked. I thought that was cute, and I giggled accordingly, but I thought to myself that most women would have that effect. As if he read my mind, he added. “After all those women I had to fuck, I finally get to make love to you.”

 

I laid down on the bed and spread my legs, for I knew that much. Women who knew that they were doing were glad to do more, and men who were worth it were happy about that. However, Finnick was the expert here, the one good thing about his years in the prison everyone else had thought was a paradise. In the past, we had already licked each others’ privates, not to mention do other fun things with our bodies. So now that we could finally bring our sexy parts together, we went right to that. He pushed into me as slowly as he could, to savor the feeling that we finally got to experience. As much as I had anticipated him inside me, I had worried about it, but my body knew just how to stretch for his.

 

I felt his seed pour into me, and I hoped it did grow into something – after all, for us, waiting too long to be together included waiting too long to have a baby together. Also, the part of my body and mind that was pleasantly addled with orgasms right now realized there were all sorts of wonderful things he could do with his penis if he didn’t want to get me pregnant or I already was pregnant.

 

            I could very much go to sleep by myself of course, but I savored the sensation of Finnick wrapping me in the blankets. We went peacefully into this particular sunset after the sunrise of a new era for us personally and the country as a whole.

 

            I was not to sleep through the whole night. Glimmer was still as trapped in the throes of pleasure as I has been, and even less shy about admitting it to everyone with compartments along the same hallway. I don’t know how my Finn could sleep through this racket.

I imagined just what exactly Cato was doing to bring about those moans, very pleasant thoughts indeed. That led to further wonderful thoughts, devious thoughts even. I wanted to walk down the hall and join them.

            I figured Cato and Glimmer would like the idea – after all, they were the most sexually adventurous people we knew. I didn’t tell Finnick, not only because he was asleep, but because it might have reminded him of the sexual perversion he had been exposed to in the Capitol. But I hoped making me happy would’ve made the idea sound good. Unfortunately he couldn’t yet make Glimmer so happy even if he wanted to – she was 17 and my Finn was well above 20. Yet Cato was 18, making him young enough for Glimmer but old enough for me.

I wondered what it would be like to not only have Finnick like I had last night and would for the rest of our lives, but be fucked by two of the most handsome men in the country, maybe even at the same time. I bet Cato would be similarly enthralled by the thought of having not one but two beautiful women. If Finnick insisted I was beautiful even when women like Glimmer existed, Cato might too. At the mere thought, the mere possibility, of both young men inside me, I almost involuntarily started filling my vagina with something besides a penis. I fingered myself good at the mere thought of being the meat in a luscious man sandwich, however unrealistic that thought may be.

I had trouble developing emotional bonds, Finnick being one of the very few outside my family. I was reminded how pleasant an exception that was as I gazed at the wonderful form of the wonderful person lying next to me. I could be as sexual as any woman, as Finn’s charms oh so gladly reminded me. Maybe a physical connection could help build an emotional one, as had apparently happened with Glimmer and Cato themselves. Finn and I, though, would’ve been of one mind before of one body even without the heartbreaking delay of the Capitol’s meddling.

           

I did eventually make it back to sleep, the soothing rhythm of a resting Finnick calming me after the agitating chaos of a very awake Glimmer finally quieted. When we were stirring in the morning, the only thought in his mind was taking his wake-up rod over to his beautiful bride’s pond. He climbed back on me as agilely as he swam, a physical wonder in and of itself, but nothing compared to how he sunk that rod into the depths of me. No doubt I was fully awake as I floated and splashed back up against him. He thrusted down at the exact same moment as I pushed up, and our bodies were swallowed by the sea together, just as they should be. Finnick kissed me on the forehead and said “To the only fish in my sea.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So Miss Cresta’s story ends, but Mrs. Odair’s is only just beginning.


End file.
